THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICAL COMMITMENT AND MEDICATION ERROR AMONG NURSES IN CENTERS AFFILIATED TO URMIA UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES IN 2018- 9

Medication error is the most common medical error and it is one of the factors
involved in patient safety and it can create complications caused by the combination of both human and
systemic factors. The ethical commitment of nursing staff is one of the important variables of
organizational behavior that affect their job performance. The purpose of this study was to determine
the relationship between ethical commitment and medication error among nurses working in centers
affiliated to Urmia University of Medical Sciences in 2018-9
Materials & Methods: This descriptive correlational study was performed on 326 nurses working in 5
medical centers of Urmia. Subjects were selected by multistage sampling method. Data were collected
using the Cadozier's ethical commitment questionnaire and the researcher-made questionnaire of self-
reported medication errors. Finally, after data collection, data were analyzed by SPSS18 software using
descriptive and analytical statistics.
Results: In this study, most of the samples were female (71.8%) with a bachelor's degree (88.7%). The
mean incidence of medication error in the last three months was 1.64 ± 1.1 per nurse. The most common
type of error was the wrong drug with the wrong dosage and incorrect documentation. 29.5% of the
errors occurred at moderate to high levels of significance, and 26.7% of the errors resulted in injury to
patients. There was a significant relationship between work experience and error rate. The majority of
nurses had a low ethical commitment score (30.67 ± 7.6). No significant correlation was found between
ethical commitment and error score (frequency of errors)(p = 0.52, r = 0.035).
Conclusion: Although there was no significant relationship between medication error and ethical
commitment as an individual factor, the role of organizational factors in medication errors seems to be
important. It is essential to focus on individual factors to eliminate medication errors. Also, managers
and health providers should work to improve organizational factors so as to reduce medication errors
and increase patient safety.