Frequency of Nursing and Midwifery errors in referred cases to the Iranian Medical Council and Imam Reza Training Hospital in Kermanshah

Background: Medical and paramedical errors can cause  irreversible injuries and sometimes may lead to death. The reason of these errors can be intentionally or unintentionally.The present research has been done with the purpose of determining the frequency of nursing and midwifery errors in referred cases to the Iranian Medical Council.

Methods: A descriptive study was conducted to evaluate all paramedics profiles referred to Iranian Medical Council and Imam Reza Hospital inspecting center during 2001-2008. All nurses and midwives involved in medical errors profiles were introduced.  In the related check – list, the age, gender, working shifts, clinical ward, kind of the error and the given verdict have been evaluated.  Data was collected and interred to Excel spread sheet and analyzed using SPSS software.

Results: 82 out of 1500 referred profiles were related to nursing and midwife failure in medical services.  The results showed that 40.24% of the errors were related to nursing  and 46.36% to midwife staffs .12.19% of the failures were related to emergency wards and private clinics and 15.85% were reported from the general clinics. 28% of errors have been happened during evening working time. 

Conclusion: We concluded that some of these failures were  attributed to crowds of patients, lack of professional staff in the health system and insufficient supervision of the related team in training hospitals . Decreasing burden of paramedics' responsibilities and increasing number of nurses and midwives is necessary and may lead to decrease in prevalence of errors.