Malpractice Tendency ofNursing Students at a Public University

Abstract

This is a descriptive study conducted to determine medical malpractice tendencies of nursing students.The target of the research was composed of 2ndgrade, 3rdgrade and 4thgrade students of a public university nursing department, and the sample of the study was 322 volunteer students who participated in the research. The research data were collected between 1 and 30 January 2018. A Personal Information Form and the Malpractice Tendency Scale were used to collect the data. Collected data were then analyzed using percentage, mean, t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation tests. This study also reported by following one the clinical practice guidelines of ‘agree’ (See Supplementary File 1).It was determined that nursing students’ average score from Malpractice Tendency Scale was found as195.7 ± 24.5 and their tendency to make medical errors was found as low. It was determined that the sub-dimension that nursing students had the least error tendency among the sub-dimensions of the Malpractice Tendency Scale was “drug and transfusion applications”, and the sub-dimension they had the most error tendency was “falls”. The malpractice tendency of female students was lower than that of male students and the tendency to malpractice decreases as the level of satisfaction with the profession increases (p˂0.05). It has been observedthat nursing students have a low tendency to malpractice. In addition, it was suggested that these issues should be reviewed in relation to patient safety and medical errors in the curriculum, as students' tendency to 'falls' is higher.