Nurses’ Safety Motivation: Examining Predictors of Nurses’ Willingness to Report Medication Errors

Abstract

Medication errors are common in health care settings. Safety motivation, such as willingness to report error, is needed to contain medication errors. Limited evidence exists about measures to enforce nurses’ safety motivation. The purpose of this study was to test a proposed model explaining the mechanism by which organizational and social factors influence nurses’ safety motivation. Survey for this cross-sectional study was mailed to a random sample of 500 acute care nurses. Data collection started in January 2014 and lasted 6 months. Path analysis results showed a good fitting final model with 15% of explained variance on nurses’ safety motivation. Safety climate dimensions of error feedback (β = .38, p ⩽ .00) and nonpunitive response to errors (β = .22, p = .01) significantly predicted the outcome. There is a need for both organizational and social factors to motivate nurses to report errors. Leadership practices emphasizing safety as a priority is needed to enhance nurses’ safety motivation.

Keywords

leadership safety climate organizational trust medication error reporting

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