Attitudes of Health Care providers toward Teamwork, Safety Climate and knowledge Transfer through Team Collaboration in an Educational Medical Center in Tehran 2009

According to importance of occupational health for health care providers and patient safety in hospitals, implementation of safety culture with teamwork is an acceptable principle. This study aims to assess attitude of health care providers toward teamwork, safety climate and knowledge transfer through team collaboration at an educational medical center in. 2009. Method and materials: This was a descriptive study. All 225 resident physicians, nurses and other paramedics of an educational hospital of Tehran participated in the study. The tool for data collection was the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ). Content validity and reliability of the questionnaire was assessed and confirmed. Data was analyzed using SPSS 16 and Chi square test. The results demonstrated that 59% of nurses, 52% of physicians and 58%of paramedics believed that tasks are performing by teamwork. 30% of nurses, 21% of physicians and 39 % of paramedics had a sense of safety in workplace. 78% of nurses, 55 % of physicians and 73% of other paramedics believed that knowledge could transfer through team collaboration. Among demographic characteristics there were significant relationship between attitude of health care providers on teamwork with their marital status (p=0.001); attitude of health care providers on safety climate with their work experience (p=0.04); attitude of health care providers on knowledge transfer trough teamwork with organizational position (p=0.016). Attitude assessment of health care providers toward teamwork, safety climate and patient's or health care provider's safety is necessary to modify and improve the current deficits and to achieve to the culture of learning from errors. Managers can have an appropriate guide to establish safety culture with this sort of attitude assessments.