Implementation and Evaluation of the North Carolina Board of Nursing’s Complaint Evaluation Tool

Clinical errors can provide value by creating opportunities to learn how to prevent future problems. To promote learning, it is vital that nurses are not automatically disciplined, although nurses who make reckless choices must be held accountable. To achieve a balance between learning from practice errors and using disciplinary action effectively, the North Carolina Board of Nursing developed the Complaint Evaluation Tool (CET) to guide nurse managers in reviewing practice errors and to clarify the criteria for managing at-risk and reckless behavior. This article describes the use of the CET in a community regional medical center.