Abstract
Every year, millions of medical errors are committed, costing not only patient health and satisfaction, but thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Errors occur in many areas of the healthcare environment, including the profession of nursing. Nurses provide and delegate patient care and consequently, standard nursing responsibilities such as medication administration, charting, patient education, and basic life support protocol may be incorrect, inadequate, or omitted. Although there is much literature about errors among the general nurse population and there is indication that new nurses commit more errors than experienced nurses, not much literature asks the following question: What are the factors contributing to the commission of errors, including the omission of standard nursing care, among new nurses? Ten studies (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-mode) were examined to identify these factors. From the 10 studies, the researcher identified the three themes of lack of experience, stressful working conditions, and interpersonal and intrapersonal factors. New nurses may not have had enough clinical time, may develop poor habits, may not turn to more experienced nurses and other professionals, may be fatigued from working too many hours with not enough staffing, may not be able to concentrate at work, and may not give or receive adequate communication. Based on these findings and discussion, suggested implications for nursing practice include extended clinical experience, skills practice, adherence to the nursing process, adherence to medications standards such as the five rights and independent double verification, shorter working hours, adequate staffing, no-interruption and no-phone zones, creating a culture of support, electronically entered orders, translation phones, read-backs, and standardized handoff reports.
Notes
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Thesis Completion
2013
Semester
Spring
Advisor
Gibson-Young, Linda
Degree
Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.)
College
College of Nursing
Degree Program
Nursing
Subjects
Dissertations, Academic -- Nursing; Nursing -- Dissertations, Academic
Format
Identifier
CFH0004439
Language
English
Access Status
Open Access
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Document Type
Honors in the Major Thesis
Recommended Citation
Knowles, Rachel, "Factors contributing to the commission of errors and omission of standard nursing practice among new nurses" (2013). HIM 1990-2015. 1417.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/1417