Iran in transition.

Physicians' and nurses' perceptions of patient safety risks in the emergency department.

The aim was to critically appraise, synthesise and present the evidence of medication errors amongst hospitalised patients in Middle Eastern countries, specifically prevalence, nature, severity and contributory factors. CINAHL, Embase, Medline, Pubmed and Science Direct were searched for studies published in English from 2000 to March 2018, with no exclusions. Study selection, quality assessment (using adapted STROBE checklists) and data extraction were conducted independently by two reviewers. A narrative approach to data synthesis was adopted; data related to error causation were synthesised according to Reason’s Accident Causation model. Searching yielded 452 articles, which were reduced to 50 following removal of duplicates and screening of titles, abstracts and full-papers. Studies were largely from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Thirty-two studies quantified errors; definitions of ‘medication error’ were inconsistent as were approaches to data collection, severity assessment, outcome measures and analysis. Of 13 studies reporting medication errors per ‘total number of medication orders’/ ‘number of prescriptions’, the median across all studies was 10% (IQR 2–35). Twenty-four studies reported contributory factors leading to errors. Synthesis according to Reason’s model identified the most common being active failures, largely slips (10 studies); lapses (9) and mistakes (12); error-provoking conditions, particularly lack of knowledge (13) and insufficient staffing levels (13) and latent conditions, commonly heavy workload (9). There is a need to improve the quality and reporting of studies from Middle Eastern countries. A standardised approach to quantifying medication errors’ prevalence, severity, outcomes and contributory factors is warranted.

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Medication errors in hospitals in the Middle East: a systematic review of prevalence, nature, severity and contributory factors

Medical errors are considered as a major threat to patient safety. To clarify medical errors’ status in Iran, a review was conducted to estimate the accurate prevalence of medical errors. A comprehensive search was conducted in international databases (MEDLINE, Scopus and the Web of Science), national databases (SID, Magiran, and Barakat) and Google Scholar search engine. The search was performed without time limitation up to January 2017 using the MeSH terms of Medical “error(s)” and “Iran” in Endnote X5. Article in English and Persian which estimated the prevalence of medical errors in Iran were eligible to be included in this review. The JBI appraisal instrument was used to assess the quality of included studies, by two independent reviewers. The prevalence of medical errors was calculating using random effect model. Stata software was used for data analysis. In 40 included studies, the most frequent occupational group observed were nursing staff and nursing students (21 studies; 52% of studies). The most reported type of error was medication error (25 studies; 62% of studies, with prevalence ranged from 10 to 80%). University or teaching hospitals (30 studies; 75% of studies) as well as, internal/intensive care wards (10 studies; 25% of studies) were the most frequent hospitals and wards detected. Based on the result of the random effect model, the overall estimated prevalence of medical errors was 50% (95% confidence interval: 0.426, 0.574). Result of the comprehensive literature review of the current studies, found a wide variation in the prevalence of medical errors based on the occupational group, type of error, and health care setting. In this regards, providing enough education to nurses, improvement of patient safety culture and quality of services and attention to special wards, especially in teaching hospitals are suggested.

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Prevalence of medical errors in Iran: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Iranian nurses’ medication errors: A survey of the types, the causes, and the related factors

Patient safety is one of the main concepts in the field of healthcare provision and a major component of health services quality. One of the important stages in promotion of the safety level of patients is identification of medication errors and their causes. Medical errors such as medication errors are the most prevalent errors that threaten health and are a global problem. Execution of medication orders is an important part of the treatment and care process and is regarded as the main part of the nurses' performance. The purpose of this study was to explore the medication error reporting rate, error types and their causes among nurses in the emergency department. In this descriptive study, 94 nurses of the emergency department of Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex were selected based on census in 2010-2011. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of two parts: demographic information, and types and causes of medication errors. After confirming content-face validity, reliability of the questionnaire was determined to be 0.91 using Cronbach's alpha test. Data analyses were performed by descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. SPSS-16 software was used in this study and P values less than 0.05 were considered significant. The mean age of the nurses was 27.7 ± 3.4 years, and their working experience was 7.3 ± 3.4 years. Of participants 46.8% had committed medication errors in the past year, and the majority (69.04%) had committed the errors only once. Thirty two nurses (72.7%) had not reported medication errors to head nurses or the nursing office. The most prevalent types of medication errors were related to infusion rates (33.3%) and administering two doses of medicine instead of one (23.8%). The most important causes of medication errors were shortage of nurses (47.6%) and lack of sufficient pharmacological information (30.9%). This study showed that the risk of medication errors among nurses is high and medication errors are a major problem of nursing in the emergency department. We recommend increasing the number of nurses, adjusting the workload of the nursing staff in the emergency department, retraining courses to improve the staff's pharmacological information, modification of the education process, encouraging nurses to report medical errors and encouraging hospital managers to respond to errors in a constructive manner in order to enhance patient safety.

Ayeshe Haji Esmaeilpoor

Papers

Medication errors of nurses in the emergency department.