Evaluation of patient safety culture: Single-center, non-randomized, cross-sectional study, Department of General Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Trakya University, Turkey experience

Abstract

This study aims to measure and analyze the patient safety culture in General Surgery Department, Faculty of Medicine, Trakya University, Edirne-Turkey. A cross-sectional study, utilizing the Turkish version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a demographic questionnaire was distributed to 125 health professionals including nurses, technicians, managers and medical staff. 125 healthcare staff, including physicians, nurses, and health officers participated in this research. The main outcome measure(s) comprise the patient safety culture score including subscores on 12 dimensions and 42 items; patient safety grade and number of events reported. Results of this study reveals overall patient safety grade was rated as excellent or very good by 40% of respondents, acceptable by 46% and failing or poor by 14%. The percentage of positive responses was highest for ‘staffing’ (52%), ‘management support for patient safety (41%), ‘non-punitive response to error” (40%), lowest for ‘teamwork within units (11%), feedback and communication about error (12%), organizational learning and continuous improvement (15%). Thus, improving patient safety culture, setting national and organizational based patient safety system without fear of punitive action should be a priority among hospital and national administrators.