Reporting of medication administration errors by nurses in South Korean hospitals

To identify differences in what nurses consider as medication administration errors, to examine their willingness to report these errors and to identify barriers to reporting medication errors by hospital type.

Cross-sectional, descriptive design. The questionnaire comprised six medication administration error scenarios and items related to the reasons for not reporting medication errors.

Two tertiary and three general hospitals in a metropolitan area, and five general hospitals in K province, in South Korea.

Registered nurses working at tertiary and general hospitals in South Korea (n = 467).

Consideration of medication administration errors, intention to report medication errors and reasoning for not file an incident report.

There were no significant differences in what nurses considered as medication administration errors between nurses working different in hospital types. The rate of incident reporting was very low; it ranged from 6.3% to 29.9%, regardless of hospital type. Korean nurses were more likely to report an error to a physician than file an incident report. The primary reason for not reporting medication errors was fear of the negative consequences of reporting the error and subsequent legal action.

The rate of filing an incident report among nurses was very low, regardless of hospital type or whether nurses perceived the incident as a medication administration error. These results may have significant implications for improving medication safety in hospitals, and more efforts are needed at the organizational level to improve incident reporting by nurses.