This study found a significant relationship between nurses' sleep quality and their clinical decision-making and tendency to make medical errors, showing that sleep quality is a crucial factor influencing both clinical decision-making skills and the tendency to make medical errors.
Nurses in the study had an average Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score indicating poor sleep quality.
Nurses' subjective sleep quality was significantly associated with their clinical decision-making scores.
Nurses' subjective sleep quality was significantly associated with their tendency to make medical errors.
Sleep quality in nurses was identified as a crucial factor influencing both clinical decision-making skills and the tendency to make medical errors.
This research suggests that the quality of sleep nurses get is meaningfully connected to how well they make clinical decisions and how likely they are to make medical errors. In a study of 366 nurses, researchers measured sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and found that the average score indicated poor sleep quality. They then used a statistical technique called path analysis to examine whether specific aspects of sleep quality predicted nurses' scores on decision-making and medical error tendency scales. The study found that subjective sleep quality — how nurses personally rate their own sleep — was significantly linked to both their clinical decision-making abilities and their tendency toward medical errors. Nurses who reported poorer subjective sleep quality had statistically different scores on both outcome measures, suggesting that feeling poorly rested may impair the cognitive processes needed for sound clinical judgment and error avoidance. This research matters because nurses work in high-stakes environments where errors can harm patients. The findings highlight sleep quality as a potentially modifiable factor that could influence patient safety outcomes. This suggests that healthcare institutions may benefit from examining work schedules, shift patterns, and other factors that affect nurses' sleep, as improving sleep quality could have downstream benefits for clinical performance and patient safety.
Karabulut Y, Koç Z. (2026). The relationship between sleep quality, clinical decision-making and the tendency to make medical errors in nurses.. Applied nursing research : ANR. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2026.152067