Exhaustion, emotional fatigue, depression and poor reconciliation of personal and professional life are ailments from which health professionals and nurses in particular suffer. The Ohio State University in the United States therefore carried out the first large-scale national study linking the well-being of nurses to self-reported medical errors. The results appeared in the JJournal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
To do this, 1,790 American nurses from 20 hospitals responded to a questionnaire consisting of 53 questions. The average age of the participants was 44 years old. The study found that 54% of nurses felt in poor physical and mental health and that around a third reported having some degree of depression, anxiety or stress. Regarding medical errors, almost half of the participants have declared them over the past 5 years.
Screening for depression to reduce medical errors
When researchers compared data on employee well-being and medical errors, they found a strong link between poor health – especially depression – and such errors. Nurses with signs of depression were 26-71% more likely to report medical errors than those who reported having a good quality of work life.
For the authors of the study, the well-being of employees must be a priority for health systems. Limit long periods of work without a break or put in place depression screeningsare all possible solutions to improve the lives of nurses, guarantee high quality care and reduce the risk of error.
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