The effect of personal protective equipment use on nurses’ tendencies to make medical errors and types of their medical errors: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the effect of nurses’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE) during their care practices on their tendency to make medical errors and the types of medical errors. The study was conducted with 505 nurses in Turkey between May 2021 and June 2021. Descriptive statistics, the Kruskal–Wallis H test, Spearman’s correlation test and the Mann–Whitney U test were used to analyze the data. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses often used PPE on different levels. A significant relationship was determined between the type of PPE used by the nurses and falls, hospital infections and patient monitoring/material safety (p < 0.05). The conclusions in this study reveal the necessity of increasing the usability, safety and effectiveness of PPE used by nurses in health institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• medical error
• nurses
• personal protective equipment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.