Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

  Background: Today, one of the main concepts in the health care systems is maintaining safety and security of patient and disclosing medical errors to patient and educational system is an important aspect of moral and necessary of care that reduces the error. This study aimed to design a valid and reliable instrument to determine the attitudes of residents towards self-disclosure of medical errors and factors affecting it.

  Methods : This study is a descriptive survey that 150 residents were conducted in Tehran University of Medical Sciences who were selected through stratified random sampling method. The researcher-made questionnaire was used for data collection. Collected data were entered into SPSS 16 statistical software using descriptive statistics, the objectives and research questions were analyzed.

  Results: 125 residents completed the questionnaires (response rate 83.3%). In overall, more residents (62.4%) agreed that medical errors are one of the most serious problems in health care systems. Almost all residents (66.4%) agreed that serious errors should be disclosed to patients, but only 36.8% of residents agreed that minor errors should be disclosed to patients and almost more than half of residents (60%) were agree that near miss errors should be disclosed to patients. Almost all residents (91.2%) was interested in to be in receiving general education or training on disclosing medical errors to patient.

  Conclusions: In according to residents̕ interest to learn about medical errors, designing a curriculum for training medical students is needed. Students also need to be trained on patient̕s bed and supervisors monitor their trainings, until the medical students at the end of training, be capable of disclose medical errors independently.