Reporting of medication administration errors by nurses in South Korean hospitals

Objective: To identify differences in what nurses consider as medication administration errors, to examine their willingness to report these errors and to identify barriers to reporting medication errors by hospital type. Design: Cross-sectional, descriptive design. The questionnaire comprised six medication administration error scenarios and items related to the reasons for not reporting medication errors. Setting: Two tertiary and three general hospitals in a metropolitan area, and five general hospitals in K province, in South Korea. Participants: Registered nurses working at tertiary and general hospitals in South Korea (n = 467). Main outcome measures: Consideration of medication administration errors, intention to report medication errors and reasoning for not file an incident report. Results: There were no significant differences in what nurses considered as medication administration errors between nurses working different in hospital types. The rate of incident reporting was very low; it ranged from 6.3% to 29.9%, regardless of hospital type. Korean nurses were more likely to report an error to a physician than file an incident report. The primary reason for not reporting medication errors was fear of the negative consequences of reporting the error and subsequent legal action. Conclusions: The rate of filing an incident report among nurses was very low, regardless of hospital type or whether nurses perceived the incident as a medication administration error. These results may have significant implications for improving medication safety in hospitals, and more efforts are needed at the organizational level to improve incident reporting by nurses.