Identification of Nurses’ Errors in the Emergency Ward, Using SHERPA Technique

Introduction: Human errors are of the most important issues due to the technological advances in various work settings. In medical professions, including nursing, investigation of human errors would help to find out approaches for the identification and reduction of these errors. Hence, the present study aimed to identify and assess nurses' errors in emergency ward of an educational hospital, using Systematic Human Error Reduction and Prediction Approach (SHERPA). Method: In this qualitative study, first, the purpose and the procedure of the research were completely explained to the nurses. Then, Hierarchical task analysis (HTA) was done and the nurses' tasks and subtasks were identified by observing their activities and conducting interviews. Then, the SHERPA worksheet was completed to find the errors pertinent to each task. Discussion: Sixty-five tasks and 231 errors were detected regarding the nurse's tasks, of which 59.3% was action errors, 25.55% checking errors, 4.33% retrieval errors, 2.16% information communication errors, and 8.66% selection errors. This means that the highest and lowest errors were respectively belonged to action errors and communication errors. Moreover, the checking errors obtained the highest undesirable risk level. Result: Overall, the action errors and the checking errors should be priority in controlling and reducing of nurses errors in emergency ward. It should be noted that SHERPA can cover a wide range of activities including factors such as patients and their caregivers or other wards of the hospitals which make this technique an appropriate tool for assessing the errors in medical professions.