Ninety-three percent of nurses working at state-run university hospitals in Japan have made or have nearly made mistakes that could have resulted in medical accidents, according to a survey conducted by a trade union.
The Faculty and Staff Union of Japanese Universities poll released Tuesday said 96 percent of nurses aged 26 to 30 made or nearly made mistakes of this kind in administering treatment, followed by 94 percent of those aged 31 to 40 and 92 percent of those aged 41 to 50. The union polled male and female nurses at 21 of the 42 state-run university hospitals in Japan, and had about 4,900 responses.
The union did not specify all the kinds of mistakes included in the survey, but they included administering injections to the wrong patients and giving patients the wrong medicine.
According to the survey, 65 percent of the respondents said they "often" or "sometimes" relieved their colleagues without getting sufficient information about their patients.
Twenty-two percent said they did not have more than one nurse check injections or IV bags before using them, while 46 percent said sometimes no one would check the medicine before it was given. Asked what measures should be taken to stop these mistakes, 80 percent said each nurse should be more careful, 77 percent said employers should increase the number of nurses and 45 percent said the number of hospital beds should be reduced.
The poll also found that 54 percent of the female nurses surveyed were at risk of having a miscarriage when pregnant over the past five years, reflecting the hardships of their work.
Hospitals "failed to take effective measures to prevent accidents (related to treatment mistakes by nurses), even after a series of accidents," a union official said. "The shortage of nurses also remains unresolved."