Organizational and Individual Contributing Factors to Safety Climate in Healthcare Industries

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that safety climate is a robust predictor of organizational safety outcomes. The current study aims to identify individual and joint key drivers of safety climate in healthcare industries using Bayesian Network simulations to explore which individual or combinational factors can be leveraged to most effectively improve safety climate for the healthcare industry. We collected the survey data from 452 employees from one hospital in China and use Bayesian Network analysis to identify the best key drivers and joint strategies for safety climate improvement. The results from Bayesian Network analyses showed that among the five contributing factors, interpersonal trust and locus of control had the strongest independent effects on safety climate. Moreover, the results indicated that the best two joint strategies for promoting safety climate were the joint optimization of error disclosure culture and interpersonal trust as well as error disclosure culture and self-efficacy. The findings suggest that hospital safety climate can be improved by providing a psychologically safe error disclosure culture and enhancing interpersonal trust among employees and their self-efficacy.