Engagement in learning after errors at work: enabling conditions and types of engagement

This article addresses two research questions concerning nurses' engagement in social learning activities after errors at work. Firstly, we investigated how this engagement relates to nurses' interpretations of the error situation and perceptions of a safe team climate. The results indicate that the individual estimation of an error as relevant to learning and the tendency to cover up an error significantly predict nurses' engagement in social learning activities. Secondly, by applying latent class analysis, we aimed to identify how individuals differ in their interpretations of error situations, their social learning activities after errors and their perceptions of a safe team climate. A reliable four‐class solution was obtained from latent class analyses. Only one class (58.8%) showed a clear orientation towards socially shared reflection and learning from errors. The other classes were characterised by answer profiles that seem incongruent to learning from errors. We discuss implications of these findings for organisational practice as well as for professional and vocational education.