Patient Safety Culture

Background: Patient safety is an essential component in the quality of patient care. It remains a challenge for developing countries. Assessment of patient safety culture in healthcare organizations is becoming an integral component to improve patients' safety. Aim of the work: To assess the perceptions of patient safety culture attitude among health-care workers in Beni-Suef University hospital.

Subjects and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted from January till December 2015 using a Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire which has 12 dimensions self-administered questionnaire for 500 university hospital staff members in Beni-Suef University hospital with a response rate of 84.6% (423/500).

Results:

Anwar, MD

E-mail address: [e-mail]

Introduction

Patient safety; a healthcare discipline, defined as ‘the prevention of harm caused by errors of commission and omission’ with special emphasis on reporting, analysis, and prevention of medical errors that often lead to an adverse health care event (1,2). People in any community are exposed to preventable medical errors; a rate that ranges from 20-42% (3). The undue consequences of such medical errors require studies focusing on patient safety, generally concentrating on hospital environments (4,5).

The strategy of a safety patient culture starts with an evaluation of the present safety level in an institution (safety precautions implemented without proper assessment may be costly with unpredicted new risks) (6). Tools developed for evaluation of the patient safety culture are many (7-9) with most of them covering five common dimensions: leadership, policies and procedures, staffing, communication and reporting (10).

Health organizations such as the Accreditations Achievement and Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative, aimed to improve patient safety culture and to deal with the unsafe healthcare practices in Eastern Mediterranean Region - World Health Organization office (WHO)

After thorough revision of the filled survey questionnaires; 25 of them were excluded (incomplete data or answers repetition). Finally, 398/500 (79.6%) questionnaires were available for data analysis.

Distribution of 398 HCWs was as follows: 52.3% nurses and technical staff (208/398), 39.4% physicians (157/398) and 8.3 % were non-medical staff (33/398).

Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire was prepared in Arabic language and used for data collection and analysis. This questionnaire was tested by a pilot study before data collection on 50 HCWs working in Beni-Suef University hospital during January, 2015. The purpose of that pilot study was to ensure the clearness and easiness of the questions. Results were included in the study.

Study tools and data collection