Frequency of Registered Medical Errors in a Hospital in Ardabil, Iran, Within 2017-18

Introduction: Patient safety is one of the main goals in a health system trying to reduce patient problems during hospitalization. These problems can be due to unintentional errors made by clinical staff the recognition and management of which are very important. The present study aimed to investigate the registered medical errors in Alavi hospital in Ardabil, Iran, during 2017-2018. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, all the wards were studied in Alavi hospital, and the data were collected by the evaluation of reported errors made by clinical staff and completion of the registered medical error forms. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Results: During the study period, 1,050 registered errors were evaluated. Most errors (n=482; 45.9%) were detected in the women’s surgery ward. According to the number of errors made by nurses in the hospital in comparison to those reported for other clinical groups, the nurses with 464 cases (44%) had the highest frequency of medical errors, and the caring errors (29%) were the most frequently committed type of errors. Conclusion: Based on the obtained results of the current study, it was shown that caring errors were the most frequently committed errors, and the highest frequency of medical errors occurred in the women’s surgery ward. Therefore, providing educational training, emphasizing on doing hospital process, reducing the duration of work shifts, and increasing the number of personnel in hospitals, could be effective in decreasing errors and associated consequences.