The effect of patient safety culture and nursing related occupational factors on tendency for medical errors in nurses

In this study, it was aimed to determine the socio-demographic and professional characteristics of nurses working in intensive care, surgery and internal medicine units and the effect of patient safety culture in the institution on medical error disposition in nurses. The study was conducted in descriptive and cross-sectional design. Gaziantep Dr. Ersin Arslan Training and Research Hospital has consisted of 750 nurses working in the intensive care, internal and surgical clinics. For the sampling, it was aimed to reach the population and the research was completed with 320 participants. In collecting the data of the research conducted between December 2020-April 2021; The Nursing Descriptive Characteristics Form, Patient Safety Culture Scale, and Tendency to Medical Errors in Nursing Scale were used. Number, percentage distribution, Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis test and Spearman correlation tests were used to analyze the data. 63,8% of the nurses participating in the study are women, 29,30±7,36 the average age, 36,3% are men, 28,4% are working in the internal unit, 27,8% in the surgical unit and 43,8% in the intensive care unit. It was determined that there is a significant difference (p<0,05) between the sociodemographic / occupational characteristics of the nurses, gender, the unit they work in, weekly working hours, the number of patients they care for, and the mean score of the sub-dimensions of the Medical Malpractice Scale. A weak positive correlation has been determined between all sub-dimensions of the Patient Safety Culture Scale and all sub-dimensions of the Medical Error Tendency Scale. As a result, we see that patient safety culture and negative working conditions of nurses increase the tendency to medical error in nurses.In line with these results; The emphasis on patient safety should be at the forefront in orientation and in-service trainings in order to prevent the patient safety culture and erroneous practices in nurses, employees should be encouraged to report unexpected events, employees' job satisfaction, professional competence and arrangements should be made to increase satisfaction.