Consideration of Factors Affecting Nurses’ Attitude of Pointing out Inter-professional Errors

In recent years, good communication and non-technical skills are recognized as critical to the delivery of high-quality patient care and to improving patient safety and clinical outcomes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition of non-technical skills by nurses and clarify the factors influencing nurses’ behavior while pointing to the multi-professional errors in health care teams in relation to non-technical skills such as communication and leadership. A mail-in questionnaire survey was administered to 1,834 nurses who work for advanced treatment hospitals throughout Japan. The questionnaire consisted of 84 items, including a scale for measuring the nurses’ attitude toward pointing out problems and non-technical skills. Multiple regression analyses were conducted, with the score on the scale for attitude toward pointing out problems as the objective variable and personal attributes, such as years of experience and job titles, and personality traits of individuals, such as non-technical skills, as separate explanatory variables (simultaneous forced entry). The number of responses to the questionnaire was 412. As a result of the multiple regression analyses, factors that affect nurses’ attitudes toward pointing out problems were affected more strongly by “assertiveness” and “leadership,” which fell under non-technical skills that are personality traits of individuals, than by basic attributes, which include years of experience and job titles. Nurses’ non-technical skills, such as “assertiveness” and “leadership,” which are personality traits of individuals, had an effect on their attitudes whereby they pointed out problems. These findings will be used in future intervention studies to improve these non-technical skills of leadership and self-assertion, improve communication and, as a result, reduce errors.