The effect of electronic error-reporting forms on nurse's stress and the rate of error-reporting

OBJECTIVES

The patient safety culture includes a systematic approach that promotes safe care for patients and the leadership that supports it. Medical errors threaten patient safety. A significant portion of medical errors is committed by nurses. Although error-reporting provides valuable information to prevent errors, most nurses do not report their errors due to their high level of stress. This study was to investigate the effect of electronic error-reporting forms on nurses' stress and the rate of error-reporting.

METHODS

The nurses' level of stress was compared when using paper error-reporting and 6 months after using electronic forms. A revised version of the Coudron questionnaire was completed by 186 nurses. Data were analyzed by SPSS 23 using Wilcoxon test. The number of reported errors in paper and electronic media was compared over the same period.

RESULTS

Implementation of the electronic error-reporting form reduced the job stress of nurses by 22.22 points (p=.00) and increased the error-reporting rate by 12.86% (p<.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Although nurse's stress significantly decreases after implementing electronic error-reporting forms, their level of stress is still high and they are still at risk for physical and mental problems. Using methods like modifying the error-reporting form will increase the error-reporting rate.

The impact of the emergency medical services (EMS) automation system on patient care process and user workflow

Background

One of the important components of the health system is the emergency medical services (EMS) system. The EMS system was implemented at Kerman University of Medical Sciences teaching hospitals to communicate the situation of patients being transferred to the hospital by EMS and to provide facilities tailored to the patient's condition. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of the EMS system on the patient care process and the workflow of users.

Methods

The hospital information system (HIS) report was used to investigate the impact of the EMS system on the patient care process and a questionnaire was distributed among 244 participants to determine its impact on the workflow of the users. Mann–Whitney U was used to analyze HIS reports, and Chi-square was used to analyze the data collected by questionnaires.

Results

The EMS system reduced the patient's stay in hospital by an average of 3 h and 45 min. It also increased the number of patients' discharge from the emergency room to 2.2% and reduced the death rate by 1.3% (p < 0.001). Besides, 78% of physicians, 75% of nurses and 83% of technicians stated that this system has positively influenced their workflow.

Conclusions

The EMS system reduced the patient's stay in hospital and mortality, and increased the speed of patient service, readiness of users to provide patient care and the number of discharged patients. However, problems such as inappropriate technical infrastructure of the EMS system should be solved to improve patients' recovery, reduce mortality and improve user satisfaction.