Assessment of Patient Safety Culture in a Selected Number of Pharmacies Affiliated to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences Using the Pharmacy Survey on Patient Safety Culture (SOPS)

Patient safety culture plays a pivotal role in the improvement of patient safety level in health centers. This study aimed to assess patient safety culture in the pharmacies affiliated to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran using a standard questionnaire developed by the American Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
This analytic, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted on 108 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in Mashhad, Iran in 2015. Participants were selected via random cluster sampling. Data were collected using the Pharmacy Survey on Patient Safety Culture (SOPS). Data analysis was performed in SPSS Version 16 at the significance level of 0.05.
Among various dimensions of patient safety culture, “communication openness” had the highest mean score (0.63±4.27) as obtained by the pharmacists, while pharmacy technicians had the highest mean score in the dimension of “teamwork” (0.58±4.18). Moreover, the lowest mean score was observed in the dimension of “overall perceptions of patient safety” in both sample groups.
According to the results of this study, commitment of healthcare authorities to patient safety culture is the most important factor in the promotion of organizational patient safety. Considering that the lowest score of patient safety culture belonged to the dimension of “overall perceptions of patient safety”,it is recommended that related training interventions be implemented for healthcare staff in order to establish and promote the patient safety culture in pharmacies.