Error Management Culture and Its Impact on Hospital Performance: A Case Study in Iran

Background and Objectives: In recent decades medical errors have become a major issue for scientific investigation to avoid potential harmful failures threatening patients’ health and safety. Developing risk management culture has been considered not only to play an important role in detecting and coping effectively with such errors but also lead to high level of organizational performance. This study aimed to examine the impact of risk management culture on the performance of training hospitals affiliated by Yazd University of Medical Sciences (YUMS).  Methods: This descriptive analytical study was conducted in three training hospitals affiliated by YUMS. Research sample consisted of 150 nurses working in the hospitals who’ve been selected by proportional randomized sampling method. Data were collected using a standard questionnaire developed by Dyck et al. Collected data were entered in SPSS version 20 and analyzed through descriptive analysis methods (Mean, Standard deviation), and Pearson correlation coefficient.  Results: the highest mean score related to error management and performance belonged to hospital A (3.84+0.32, 3.49+0.49). In both hospitals A and B, a significant statistical relationship between error management culture and organizational performance was approved.  Conclusion: Study findings suggested that improvement in error management culture would lead to higher level of performance. In fact supportive culture in error management could be translated to high organizational performance through decreasing negative error consequences.