ABSTRACT
As health care organizations seek to be highly reliable, systems that include layers of redundancy have been created to protect patients from harm. Many of these layers of protection are dependent on nurses making a decision to follow or adhere to the human aspects of the process. Because these decisions begin with a perception and identification of risk, understanding what nurses perceive to be a risk to patients is an essential part of designing safer health care systems. The purposes of this qualitative study were to (1) describe what nurses perceive as risky to patients in common nursing practice situations, (2) describe the effects of the perceptions of risk on clinical decision making and behavior, and (3) identify what factors nurses perceive as increasing or decreasing risk.
