The malpractices of student nurses in clinical practice in Turkey and their causes

The study was conducted to identify whether or not student nurses made the medical errors as well as the reasons for the errors. A study was conducted with 1067 student nurses studying at 12 universities in Turkey. The data were collected by using medical error scale and a questionnaire on demographic characteristics and malpractices. Overall 28% of the student nurses performed malpractice during clinical practice. Medical errors included failure of complying with sterility and asepsis rules (32%), wrong identification of patient identity (19%), and administrating wrong dosage of medications (12%). They obtained a mean score of 4.19±0.62 from the overall scale and the lowest score was 3.9±0.78 for drug administrations. Nursing students perform considerable amount of malpractice and they should especially improve concerning administration of drugs.