Error reporting and the performance of nursing management: a game-theoretic study

Abstract The interaction between nurses and their managers is a very important factor in nurses’ error reporting behaviour, which is crucial to improving patient safety in healthcare organizations. However, little theoretical work has been undertaken to analyse this interaction. This paper uses a game-theoretic principal–agent framework with asymmetric information to study this interaction. We suppose that the principal (the nurse manager) asks the agent (the nurse) to perform a task with a certain patient. In case a mistake is made while treating the patient, the nurse has to decide whether to report it to the manager, who can observe whether the patient suffered an accident. We consider different manager’s leadership styles and analyse their performance in obtaining error notification from nurses in this framework.