Abstract
Background: An essential condition to improve patient safety is considered to ensure a supportive patient safety culture. Measuring the culture of patient safety in all health care institutions may be a first step to target improvements. Creating a culture of safety requires eliminating the culture of blame. In order to formulate actions for improvement, it is important for hospitals to assess their baseline scores for the existing safety culture and to determine the areas of priority. Aim: The aim of this study was first to measure the use, translation in Albanian and adaptation of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) assessment as a tool for improving patient safety in Kosovo Hospitals. The second aim was to measure the level of patient safety culture in Kosovo, in seven hospitals and one University Clinical Center (hospitals with over 50 beds, including psychiatric hospitals). Method: The questionnaire (HSOPSC) was translated into Albanian for use in the Kosovo. It was used forward-backward translation: the questions were translated into Albanian by one translator and then translated back into English by an independent translator who was blinded to the original questionnaire. Results: In the eight-factor model, the internal consistency of the factors and the construct validity of the HSOPSC questionnaire were mostly satisfactory. The construct validity was sufficient for all subscales, except for the 4 other subscale regarding intention to report incidents which correlated poorly with other subscales. In total, HSOPSC has 12 dimensions. Cronbach’s α showed that in Kosovarian society, we could use only 8 dimensions model. Conclusion: The hypothesis that HSOPSC would be a suitable instrument to provide important indicators for the improvement of patient safety culture was tested and it was confirmed, that HSOPSC could be used as 8 dimension model. HSOPSC is suitable to improve patient safety culture and provide each hospital with a basic profile on patient safety culture and recommendations for an oriented intervention plan.
Highlights
Measuring the culture of patient safety in all health care institutions may be a first step to target improvements in healthcare
The hypothesis that the patient safety culture topic is an important challenge to all interested health care providers who wish to improve patient safety grade that respondents gave for their practice correlate positively with their scores on all factors, was confirmed
The hypothesis that Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) would be a suitable instrument to provide important indicators for the improvement of patient safety culture was tested and it was confirmed, that HSOPSC could be used as 8 dimension model
Summary
Measuring the culture of patient safety in all health care institutions may be a first step to target improvements in healthcare. Safety culture can be considered a sub-facet of organizational culture and is a relatively new term having been highlighted in a report by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG) after the Chernobyl disaster [1]. It is defined as being the “...product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization’s health and safety management” [2]. HSOPSC is suitable to improve patient safety culture and provide each hospital with a basic profile on patient safety culture and recommendations for an oriented intervention plan
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