Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Errors occur commonly in hospitals and nurses are potential observers of these misconducts and they can prevent them by reporting. This research studies the types of errors, misconducts, and inappropriate situations in the nursing field, compares these errors in private and public hospitals and finally studies individuals' reactions to these errors (whistle-blowing and not whistle-blowing). Two hundred and forty five subjects were chosen out of 2260 nurses in Isfahan hospitals. In this study, a list of errors, misconducts and whistle-blowing criteria by McDonald instrument was used. Results showed that there is significant difference between error models in private and public hospitals, also between strategies used by whistle-blowers and non whistle-blowers when they observed errors, misconduct and inappropriate situations.  Sixty-two percent of nurses revealed errors after observing them. Identifying the types of errors can help health decision makers to decrease them and will raise awareness of this issue. In addition, by decreasing the impediments of whistle-blowing, errors and organizational misconducts will be decreased.