Use of Clinical Faculty Input in Development of an Error and Near-Miss Reporting Form

BACKGROUND: Nonreporting of medical errors is an impediment to error prevention and safety in the clinical environment. Many prelicensure nursing education programs do not have policies, procedures, or forms to support student reporting of errors or near misses during their clinical experiences. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of clinical faculty with prelicensure nursing student errors or near misses in the clinical environment and to use this information to create a reporting form. METHODS: Focus groups were used to obtain information about the experiences of clinical faculty (n = 28) with errors or near misses of students. RESULTS: Clinical faculty reported students having safety issues with medication administration, being too task oriented, and modeling shortcut behaviors they had witnessed in clinical practice rather than performing skills as they had learned them. Using information obtained, a clinical error and near-miss reporting form was developed. CONCLUSIONS: This form has the potential to increase patient safety in the clinical environment by improving reporting.