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A study in the January issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety finds that failure to include nurses in discussions of medical errors may compromise the quality of the disclosure experience for patients and their families, HealthDay News reports. For the study, researchers from the University of Washington School of Nursing surveyed 100 nurses and found that, although they often disclosed to patients those errors within their control, such as delayed or missed medications or treatments, they were reluctant to discuss more serious errors or errors committed by other members of the treatment team. Rather, survey respondents indicated that responsibility for reporting such occurrences should fall to the patient's attending physician. However, the surveyed nurses indicated that they wanted to be present for the disclosure discussion. According to the survey, failure to include nurses in the disclosure process may contribute to moral distress when nurses are later questioned by patients or patients' families, as well as reduced job satisfaction and increased nurse turnover. Calling efforts to improve the quality of error disclosure practices a top priority, the study authors suggest that hospitals adopt team disclosure policies that include efforts to quickly share information about errors among team members and communicate what is being done to mitigate the error and what the patient has been told. In addition, the authors recommend that hospitals train nurse managers on how to disclose errors to patients and families (HealthDay News, 1/22/09; Joint Commission release, 1/7/09).