Identification of the Causes of Nursing Errors Based on Lived Experiences of Nurses

Introduction: Identification of the causes of nursing errors based on the nurses’ lived experience. Nursing errors have adverse consequences, including risk of health, death and disability, long treatment period, increased treatment costs, and increased disrespect for nursing system and treatment centers. Methods: This research was performed qualitatively through a descriptive phenomenological method. Samples were selected from nurses of hospitals with the highest nursing errors reported. Purposive sampling was carried out in accordance with the benchmark and continued until saturation of information with ten people. Data gathering tool was an individual, indepth, semi-structured interview; accuracy and robustness of data were confirmed by the standards of Lincoln and Guba (1985). The results were analyzed by Colaizzi method. Results: The causes of nursing errors were classified into 7 clusters and 18 categories. The main clusters extracted included organizational, task, interpersonal, hardware, environment, individual, and diagnostic causes. Conclusion: Nursing errors cannot be simply attributed to agency; the structure and context also contribute to it. There are suggestions for controlling and addressing the causes of error. This study showed that the nurses’ experiences are an important source for identifying the causes of error; many factors that may not seem to affect nursing errors have been identified as an influencing factor which can reduce the incidence of nursing errors if understood by administrators and supervisors.