Exploring Strength Areas of Patient Safety Culture Improvement in KAMC, Makkah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background: Patient safety culture is an extremely important aspect and a crucial issue in health services. Assessing patient safety culture is a fundamental in obtaining first-hand information on healthcare settings that will help to identify positive areas and shortcomings in patient safety practices that require future improvement. Objective: This study aims to investigate the strengths area of patient safety culture improvement. Also, this study evaluates employees’ perceptions concerning patient safety culture. Subjects and Methods: A mixed methodology and cross-sectional design was used to achieve the aim of the study. Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire was used to collect data from 350 front line health care providers at specialized hospital, Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Results: The highest rated Patient safety culture dimensions from health care staff perspective was teamwork within units and across the unit, supervisor/ manager expectations and actions promoting patient safety and over all perception of patient safety. The lowest rated dimension was non punitive response to errors, Communication openness, and frequency of events reported. The most of the participants given excellent or very good score in overall patient safety grade, and the majority of the respondents never reported any events during last 12 months. The study statistically proved the relationship between patient safety culture and area of work and number of events reported. In this study result showed that there is significantly difference exist between 12 dimensions of composite items with patient’s safety culture. Conclusion and Recommendations: This study found the strengths and areas of improvements of patient safety culture in the hospital. The good leadership support, effective communication, sufficient staffing, team work, open communication about errors and adequate working hours can improve patient safety culture. This study recommends the health care leaders to create an institutional strategic plan to improve patient safety programs in hospital settings.