Assessment of patient safety culture: a nationwide survey of community pharmacists in Kuwait

Fatemah Mohammad Alsaleh,Hamed Hamdi Altabaa,Eman Ali Abahussain,Noor Barak Almandil,Mohammed Faisal Al-Bazzaz

doi:10.1186/s12913-018-3662-0

Abstract

BackgroundMedication errors have been the largest component of medical errors threatening patient safety worldwide. Several international health bodies advocate measuring safety culture within healthcare organizations as an effective strategy for sustainable safety improvement. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study conducted in a Middle Eastern country at the level of community pharmacy, to examine safety culture and to evaluate the extent to which patient safety is a strategic priority.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. The Pharmacy Survey on Patient Safety Culture (PSOPSC), developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), was used to collect data. PSOPSC is a self-administered questionnaire which was previously tested for validity and reliability. The questionnaire was distributed among pharmacists who work in community pharmacies from the five governorates of Kuwait (Capital, Hawalli, Farwaniya, Jahra, and Ahmadi). The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software, version 24 was used for analysing data.ResultsA total of 255 community pharmacists from the five governorates were approached to participate in the study, of whom 253 returned a completed questionnaire, with the response rate of 99%. Results from the study showed that patient safety is a strategic priority in many aspects of patient safety standards at the level of community pharmacies. This was reflected by the high positive response rate (PRR) measures demonstrated in the domains of “Teamwork” (96.8%), “Organizational Learning-Continuous Improvement” (93.2%) and “Patient Counselling” (90.9%). On the other hand, the lowest PRR was given to the “Staffing, Work Pressure, and Pace” domain which scored 49.7%.ConclusionsUnderstanding community pharmacists’ perspectives of patient safety culture within their organization is critical. It can help identify areas of strength and those that require improvement, which can help support decision about actions to improve patient safety. The current study showed that urgent attention should be given to the areas of weakness, mainly in the dimension of “Staffing, Work Pressure and Pace.” The pharmacists pointed the need for adequate breaks between shifts and less distractible work environment to perform their jobs accurately.

Highlights

Medication errors have been the largest component of medical errors threatening patient safety worldwide
While all medication errors are preventable, 28% of Adverse Drug Events (ADE), defined as “injuries resulting from medical interventions related to a drug” [2], are preventable and pharmacists can play a pivotal role in preventing 50% of them [5]
Frameworks, surveys and assessment tools have been designed over the past decade to measure and understand the type of culture that exists within healthcare organizations and to identify the areas of strengths and gaps [8, 10,11,12,13,14]

Summary

Introduction

Medication errors have been the largest component of medical errors threatening patient safety worldwide. Medication errors, defined as “any preventable events that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the healthcare professional, patient, or consumer” [2], are a common component of medical errors threatening patient safety [2, 3]. They are estimated to be the 8th leading cause of death in the US and are responsible for the death of approximately 44.000 to 98.000 people every year [1, 4]. Frameworks, surveys and assessment tools have been designed over the past decade to measure and understand the type of culture that exists within healthcare organizations and to identify the areas of strengths and gaps [8, 10,11,12,13,14]

Methods

Results

Conclusion