Introduction: In recent years, patient safety has become a major concern for many goverments, organizations and healthcare providers.The World Health Organization estimates that medical errors impact at least on 1 of 10 patient around the world. Because of complexity of the neonatal intensive care (NICU) environment, and the vulnerability of the neonates increase the risk for medical errors and also neonatal nurses typically are on the forefront of defense to protect patient safety, this study was conducted to assess the safe practice of nurses in neonatal intensive care units of Tabriz.
Methods: using a cross – sectional study method, practice of 90 nurses in neonatal intensive care unit was observed with using of safe practice checklist in 9 domain. By focusing on errors associated with Blood/laboratory studies, Radiology studies, Delays in patient service, Information transfer, Patient care equipment/medical devices, Patient transport, Pain, Hospital or unit policies and guidelines, Infection control standards were investigated. The study period was from july to august 2013.
Results: a total of 5094 events were assessed by safe practice checklist. 1116 errors detected and 3978 events were without error .overall average of safe practice of nurses was 78 percent. The lowest level of errors (0.22%) was detected in field of blood/laboratory studies and the highest level of errors (48.4%) had occurred in field of the pain management.
Conclusion: according to the results, the nurses demonstrated good performance in major patient safety domains. poor performance about some of the check list items such as pain management was observed.