Predictors of hospitalized patients’ intentions to prevent healthcare harm: A cross sectional survey

Abstract

BackgroundPatients can play an important role in reducing healthcare harm but little is known about the factors that may affect patients’ willingness to participate. In order to encourage the ‘active’ patient it is critical that we gain a deeper understanding of the antecedents of safety-relevant behaviours. Doing this will enable the implementation of effective interventions aimed at supporting patients to work with healthcare professionals in ensuring safe care. ObjectiveTo examine predictors of patients’ intentions to engage in two safety behaviours: (1) reminding healthcare staff to wash their hands and; (2) notifying healthcare staff if they are not wearing a hospital identification bracelet. DesignCross-sectional survey study. ParticipantsA purposive sampling method was employed to recruit 80 medical and surgical hospital inpatients aged 18–80 (mean 48) from one inner city London teaching hospital. MethodsA 42 item survey that measured the extent that patients’ control beliefs, behavioural beliefs, normative beliefs and perceived susceptibility and severity towards a hospital-acquired infection or a misidentification error could predict their intentions to ask doctors/nurses about their hand washing compliance or notify doctors/nurses if they are not wearing a hospital identification bracelet. Data was analysed using multiple regression analysis. ResultsControl beliefs, normative beliefs and perceived severity were the strongest predictors of patients’ intentions to participate in both behaviours. The regression models accounted for a smaller percentage of the variance in patients’ intentions to ask doctors/nurses if they have washed their hands (42%/37%) than notifying staff if they were not wearing an identification bracelet (54%/56%). ConclusionsIf patients understand why a behaviour is beneficial, they perceive it as acceptable to participate in and that they have control over the decision to engage in the behaviour, we hypothesise that more patients will intend to participate in that behaviour. When designing interventions aimed at encouraging the participation of patients in promoting their own safety, consideration should be given to the potential influence of patients’ control beliefs, normative beliefs and perceived severity of errors on their intentions to participate.