Assessing Patient Safety Culture in United States Hospitals.

Abdulmajeed Azyabi,Waldemar Karwowski,Ahmad Elshennawy,Thomas T H Wan,Peter Hancock

doi:10.3390/ijerph19042353

Abstract

A positive patient safety culture plays a major role in reducing medical errors and increasing productivity among healthcare staff. Furthermore, understanding staff perceptions of patient safety culture and effective patient safety factors is a first step toward enhancing quality of care and patient safety. The objectives of this study were to assess patient safety culture in hospitals in the United States and to investigate the effects of hospital and respondent characteristics on perceived patient safety culture. An analysis of 67,010 respondents in the 2018 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) comparative database was conducted with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that perceptions of patient safety culture had a positive influence on the overall perceptions of patient safety and frequency of event reporting. Moreover, staff position, teaching status, and geographic region were found to have varying influence on the patient safety culture, overall perceptions of patient safety, and frequency of event reporting.

Highlights

The field of healthcare in the United States (U.S.) has long been considered hazardous because of unhealthful or error-prone environments, high mortality rates, and the unnecessary loss of valuable lives and assets [1]
Most of the hypotheses were confirmed by the research findings, with the exception of H2b (Figure 2)
The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of the relationships among the perceptions of patient safety culture (PSC), overall perceptions of patient safety, frequency of event reporting, and hospital and respondent characteristics, among medical and administrative staff in U.S

Summary

Introduction

The field of healthcare in the United States (U.S.) has long been considered hazardous because of unhealthful or error-prone environments, high mortality rates, and the unnecessary loss of valuable lives and assets [1]. The inconsistency between highly advanced medical technologies and less developed medical practices leads to disappointment among patients expecting to receive high-quality healthcare, and to frequent vulnerability to medical errors and adverse events (AEs) [1]. Research has shown that U.S healthcare institutions lack many of the innovations required to eliminate prevalent risk [2–6]. By highlighting the amount of harm done, the IOM encourages healthcare institutions to improve the quality of their healthcare practices and increase patient safety. Increasing awareness of patient safety creates a culture ensuring that patients encounter fewer risks while receiving healthcare [7]. Attention has shifted to making a culture of patient safety a cornerstone of effective healthcare policy

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion