Sümeyye AKÇOBAN, İsmail DUSAK, Fatma ASLAN
Journal of Education and Research in Nursing - 2026;23(3):161-166
Background: Professional self-efficacy influences nurses' clinical performance and the safety of care. Examining its relationship with the tendency toward medical errors is essential for informing strategies to improve patient safety. Aim: This study aimed to examine the relationship between nurses' perceived professional self-efficacy and their tendency toward medical errors. Methods: This descriptive and correlational study was conducted with 200 nurses working in a training and research hospital between October 15 and November 5, 2025. Data were collected using the Nurse Descriptive Information Form, the Nursing Profession Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Tendency Toward Medical Errors Scale. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, normality testing (skewness and kurtosis), the Mann-Whitney U test, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and Spearman correlation analysis. Results: Among the participants, 54.5% were female, 83.5% held a bachelor's degree, and the mean age was 29.62+/-5.29 years. Nurses demonstrated high levels of professional self-efficacy (68.61+/-8.97) and low levels of tendency toward medical errors (228.00+/-19.79). A statistically significant, moderate positive correlation was found between the total scores of the Nursing Profession Self-Efficacy Scale and the Tendency Toward Medical Errors Scale (r=0.454, p<0.001). Conclusion: These findings suggest that professional self-efficacy is a meaningful individual-level correlate of nurses' self-reported safety-related practices. Considering the scoring direction of the medical error tendency scale, nurses with stronger professional self-efficacy reported lower error propensity. However, this relationship should be interpreted cautiously because the study was correlational and did not test the effects of any intervention.
