Objective. Medication errors are the most common types of medical errors which considerably endanger the patient safety. This survey aimed to study the factors influencing not reporting on medication errors from the nurses’ viewpoints in Abbasi Hospital of Miandoab, Iran. Methods. This was a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study conducted in 2012 in which all nurses ( ) working in different inpatient units were studied using a consensus method. Required data were collected using a questionnaire. Collected data were analyzed through some statistical tests including Independent -test, ANOVA, and chi-square. Results. According to the results, the most important reasons for not reporting on medication errors were related to the managerial factors ( ), factors related to the process of reporting ( ), and fear of the consequences of reporting ( ), respectively. Also, there was a significant relationship between employment status and fear of the Consequences of reporting on medication errors ( ). Conclusion. This study results showed that managerial factors had the greatest role in the refusal of reporting on medication errors. Therefore, for example, establishing a mechanism to improve quality rather than focus only on finding the culprits and blaming them can result in improving the patient safety. 1. Introduction One of the most fundamental components of health care quality is the patient safety [1]. The patient safety is a priority for every health care system which follows the ensuring and improving of the quality of health care [2] and also is one of the main concerns of all health care systems [3, 4]. The principle of “no harm” in the Hippocratic Oath is a confirmation of this issue [5]. The patient safety is known as to avoid injuries to the patients or occurring unexpected adverse events of health care processes [6]. Adverse events and medical errors are the main factors endangering the patient safety which are the most important problems of all health care systems, and all of these systems try to reduce their resulted injuries [5]. Statistics show that from 2.9% to 16.6% of hospital inpatients suffer from treatment-related adverse events [7, 8]. On the other hand, the rate of medical errors throughout the world is so high that is accounted for one of the five major causes of deaths [9]. One of the most common types of medical errors is medication error which because of their high prevalence and potential risks to patients, the rate of medication errors is considered as an indicator to determine the level of the patient safety in hospitals
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