Risk-Taking Behavior in Nursing Practice and Related Factors

Abstract

This study aimed to examine how factors such as personal attributes, locus of control, and risk-seeking tendency are related to the risk-taking behavior that nurses unintentionally engage in at work, while being well aware of the consequences it would have on their patients. A self-report questionnaire was mailed to 907 registered or practical nurses working at hospitals in Japan with more than 500 beds. Six hundred and ten of them returned valid responses. Analysis of the responses found that, of the nurses who answered that they had engaged in risk-taking behavior, an average of 40.1 percent of them engaged in all of the seventeen types of risk-taking behavior listed on the questionnaire. It also revealed that nurses' risktaking behavior was related to their age, years of nursing experience, locus of control, and risk-seeking tendency in such ways that nurses who were younger were more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior, while nurses who had more years of nursing experience tended to interrupt their work or help patients to walk or transfer themselves violating the two-nurse rule for assistance. The latter group of nurses was also inclined to reflect their loci of control and behavioral tendencies in their daily lives in work.