An Investigation of Patient Safety Culture: The Beginning for Quality and Safety Improvement Plans in Patient Care Services

Medical errors are one of the five most common causes of death. Patient safety is an important issue in healthcare systems, and the existence of a strong patient safety culture in hospitals influences safety-related behaviors and reduces medical errors. The present study aimed to evaluate patient safety culture in Ardabil hospitals and investigate the attitude of employees towards their own performance compared to their colleagues in the field of patient safety culture.

The data of this cross-sectional study were collected from 420 staff of four hospitals of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences by HSOPSC questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire for staff opinions on their own practice in the field of patient safety culture. One-way Anova and T-tests were used to determine the statistical relationship between staff demographics and dimensions of patient safety culture. SPSS24 software was used for analysis.

The overall mean percentage of positive response to the dimensions of patient safety culture was 57.71% and was in the middle range. The highest percentage of positive responses was related to the dimensions of "Feedback & Communication about Error" (86.82%) and "Teamwork within Units" (86.64%). The lowest percentage of positive response was related to the dimensions of "Frequency of Events Reported" (24.83%) and "Non-punitive Response to Errors" (27.93%). Investigating the attitude of employees towards their own performance compared to their colleagues shows that in most dimensions, employees perceive their performance better than their colleagues.

The status of patient safety culture in the studied hospitals needs to be improved. The error reporting by staff is also very low. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the number of staff, especially nurses in proportion to the number of patients and the workload, to reduce staff working hours, adopt policies of safety and non-punitive culture, support staff and implement effective training programs in hospitals.