A cross exploratory analysis between nursing working conditions and the occurrence of errors in the northeast region of Brazil

Objectives

Analyze and verify the association between working conditions and the occurrence of errors in nursing work.

Background

Many of the known errors in nursing are based on the structural failure of the complex health service system. Our study addresses the question “Is there an association between errors made by nursing workers and working conditions?”

Methods

The study was carried out through a cross-sectional exploratory analysis of 19 ethical-disciplinary processes focused on errors made by nursing workers. The articles were processed, judged, and archived at the Regional Nursing Councils of the Northeast Region of Brazil from 2000 to 2018. The chi-square test or Fisher's exact test was used to verify the relationship between the variables through multivariate analysis.

Results

The analyzes show that working conditions can interfere at occurrence in error. This increases the chance of an “inconsequential” error occurring for the patient in poor/very poor working conditions. The most serious errors, “with consequences irreversible” for the patient, only occur from more severe working conditions. Adversely, it was found that there is no statistically significant difference in the frequency of errors in hospitals (33.33 %) compared to “other places” (28.58 %) when these occurred in poor working conditions. When conducting the incident in poor working conditions, there was a minimum of 52 % protection OR = 0.48 % [0.16; 11.80]; (1–0.48)) against these errors in general in the nursing area.

Conclusion

The strong association was exposed in working conditions classified as bad/very bad/very bad, resulting in the most serious errors and with irreversible consequences for patients. However, a level of protection for different types of workers was noticed in the field, which shows that there is hope that if the work environment changes with more organization, management, and standards of care, we can prevent future errors.