AbstractsMedical & Health Science

Nurses are at 'the point' of care giving – an environment deemed by experts as highly arduous and dangerous. Nurses possessing mindfulness – undivided attention and awareness on the present – can increase the reliability of a process's performance. The purpose of this research project is to explore whether nurses' mindfulness is related to medical error. For this study, research hypotheses are (1) nurse mindfulness reduces preventable medical error and (2) nurse mindfulness increases preventable medical error reporting. The study was a quasi-experimental with a nonequivalent pretest-posttest control group design. The design structure included one experiment group and one control group, and subjects were chosen by convenience sampling. The experiment group received mindfulness education training as an intervention. The Nurse Mindfulness Survey is an electronic survey comprised of a demographic section and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). Medical errors were measured as an aggregate number according to each critical care unit prior to the pretest phase and after posttest phase. Medical errors and medical error reporting were collected by unit before and after the intervention and reported as numbers in the aggregate. Descriptive statistics were used for MAAS responses. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed on pretest and posttest MAAS responses. Medical errors were collected according to event severities that were categorized by a colored scheme. For comparison, medical error data were collected at three points in time. The MAAS posttest mean score for the experimental group was 4.46 and the control group was 4.45. ANCOVA compared the experiment group mean, post mindfulness education, with the control group mean. No statistical differences between the two groups were found. Even though dispositional mindfulness has been linked to skill-based errors, this study did not show any significant difference in nurse mindfulness levels between the two groups or that a higher mindfulness level resulted from the intervention (mindfulness education).Nurses are in an excellent position to not only identify the problems but to achieve reliable performance. Nurses who maintain mindfulness (attentive to the present moment) can identify contributing factors to substandard performance and find ways to better detect, recover from, or preclude problems that could result in medical errors and patient harm.