Abstract
The safety and quality of patient care are basic guidelines in finding new and improved solutions in nursing. Important and influential factors shape the nurses' work environment in hospitals. With the study, we intended to investigate whether the perception of nurses' work environment is related to the safety culture and the quality of patient care and whether it differs according to nurses' level of education. The study with a quantitative research method was conducted at the six clinical departments of the University Medical Centre, Ljubljana in 2019. We used a survey questionnaire from the European survey Nurse forecasting in Europe (RN4CAST). 270 nurses were included in the study. The response rate was 54%. The study confirmed that there is a correlation between the assessment of the nurses' work environment and the general assessment of patient safety (r = 0.36; p <0.001), the general assessment of the quality of nursing care (r = 0.32; p <0.001), the confidence in patient self-care at discharge (r = 0.29; p <0.001) and the quality of patient care in the previous year (r = 0.27; p = 0.001). The results showed frequent verbal abuse of nurses, in 44.9% by patients and their relatives and in 35.4% by staff. Graduate nurses rated the work environment more negatively than healthcare technicians (p = 0.003). We confirmed the correlation between the assessment of nurses' work environment and patient safety and the quality of health care, and that employees' education influences the assessment and perception of the work environment.
Highlights
The safety and quality of patient care are basic guidelines in finding new and improved solutions in nursing
Our findings showed that two-third of nurses (68%) rated the patient safety culture as “good” or “excellent”
Various U.S researchers have shown that a poorer safety culture of the hospital increased the 30-day mortality rate among patients with acute myocardial infarction [26] and that in patients with heart failure, the possibility of readmission within 30 days after discharge from hospital increased by 2–8% if certain nursing care activities were not performed [27]
Summary
The main goal of the study was to determine whether the results confirm the correlation of the work environment to the culture of patient safety in the hospital, and to the quality of care
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