Towards a safer future: a qualitative exploration of strategies for preventing medical errors in nursing practice

Medical errors remain a significant and preventable cause of patient injury and death, presenting a continuous challenge to safety within hospitals worldwide. Understanding the origins and preventative strategies for medical errors has become a renewed priority for numerous healthcare systems worldwide in an effort to enhance patient safety.

In this descriptive phenomenological study, 12 multidisciplinary healthcare staff, nurse managers, and faculty members were selected through purposive sampling from three hospitals and one university-based center affiliated with a medical university in southeastern Iran. Data collection was done through semi-structured in-depth individual interviews with participants. All interviews were analyzed by the seven steps of Colaizzi's method in MAXQDA version 10.

"The unfinished architecture of safe care: reflection on prevention" emerged as the main theme of the study. Six subthemes and 29 categories were extracted from data analysis. Six subthemes were identified: "Excellence in Care", "Empowerment: the cornerstone of patient safety", "Professional Supervision: a vigilant eye for patient safety", "Managerial Enhancement", "Supportive Chains", and "Cultural Responsiveness".

Participants perceived multidimensional strategies for error prevention. Although some of the strategies are already recognized, in settings with limited resources, workforce, and infrastructure, they may still require sustained effort, repetition, and ongoing revision. The proposed strategies encompass consideration of contextual factors, care delivery, infrastructural readiness, and management and planning practices -along with certain preventive changes and innovations- which may contribute to reducing medical errors in nursing practice. These findings offer a foundation for context‑sensitive interventions in under‑resourced healthcare settings.