BACKGROUND/AIMS

The determination of nursing students' tendency to commit medical errors and having knowledge about the erroes before they affect patients may ensure taking necessary precautions. The aim of this study was to determine the nursing students' tendency to commit medical errors and the variables that affected it.

MATERIAL and METHODS

This was a cross-sectional study. The sample of the study consisted of 167 nursing students who voluntarily accepted to participate in the study. The Student Identification Form and the Medical Error Tendency in Nursing Scale were used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics, number, percentage, independent t test and ANOVA test were used for statistical analysis by Statistical Package For Social Science 22.0 (IBM Corp.; Armonk, NY, USA) package program.

RESULTS

The mean age of the students was 21.23±2.48 years. 65.3% of them were female, 37.1% of them were second year students. The mean score of the nursing students on the whole Medical Error Tendency in Nursing Scale was 214.71±25.58. Lower dimension score average of the scale was found to be 79.39±9.94 in the “Medication and Transfusion Applications” lower dimension, 53.10±7.07 in the “Prevention of Infections” lower dimension, 38.56±5.24 in the “Patient Follow-Up and Material-Device Safety” lower dimension, 21.67±3.36 in the “Prevention of Falls” lower dimension and 21.97±3.45 in the “Communication” lower dimension. There were statistically significant differences between the students’ mean scores on the whole Medical Error Tendency in Nursing Scale according to their grades, and it was observed that the fourth grade students had a statistically lower tendency to commit medical errors compared to the second grade students.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it was found that the nursing students' tendency to commit medical errors was low and their grades affected their tendency to commit medical errors.

Keywords: Clinical practice, medical errors, nursing student, tendency to commit medical errors