Medication Errors and Their Correlation with Nurse's Satisfaction. The Case of the Hospitals of Lasithi, Crete.

Background: Medication errors have been recognized as a real problem for all health systems worldwide and are the most common category of nursing errors. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of medication errors and their correlation with the job satisfaction of nurses.

Method: A prospective cross-sectional study was carried out and the sample of the study consisted of 189 nurses. To investigate medication errors, an anonymous structured questionnaire of 34 questions was used and Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) questionnaire was used to measure job satisfaction. The IBM SPSS 25.0 program was used for statistical analysis of the data.

Results: 63.0% of nurses have been errors in the administration of medication, more often by the wrong time of administration (34.4%), missed dose (22.8%), and wrong dose (21.7%). The likelihood of an error is similar in all shifts, its devaluation is a non-reference reason, and if reported to a greater frequency in the attending physician. A significant difference in the frequency of errors was found only in the marital status and the job, while under the working conditions no significant variation was recorded. Job satisfaction is statistically significantly low for financial earnings and high for the management supervision. Based on the findings, the correlation between total job satisfaction and medication errors was not significant.

Conclusions: Nursing medication errors continue to happen. Continuing education, formal recording, and improvement of working conditions could help prevent and minimize errors and at the same time increase the job satisfaction of nurses.