RESUMO
Clinical errors are considered as serious treat for patient safety. Since the students are in training process, therefore the patients in teaching hospitals are faced with variety of medical errors. The aim of this study was to explore clinical errors of nursing students and dealing with them. In this qualitative study, purposeful sampling semi-structured interviews were performed with 30 male and female nursing students in 2010. The interviews were transcribed line by line and were analyzed according to Morse's content analysis approach. Clinical error was explained as "treat for patient's life or damage". The most common error was medical and procedural errors. "Hiding" from the others was the dominant dealing approach of the students with clinical errors. Disclosing errors of the students was faced with anger of nurses and physicians, patients, their relatives, the instructor, and feeling guilty of the students. "Not asking for help or guidance, lack of knowledge and skill, not enough supervision by senior nurse or instructor" were some of related factors for occurrence of clinical errors by the novice learners. The most frequent error occasion was when a trainee received an oral order. The live experiences of the students indicated that error events are inevitable in clinical areas and their dominant dealing approach is hiding error. It is very important that students learn and understand ethical and legal approaches of managing clinical error before they enter real practice. To minimize error occurrence, reporting programs may be considered a necessity