Nurse judgements of hospitalized patients' safety concerns are affected by patient, nurse and event characteristics: A factorial survey experiment.

Abstract

Aim: To test the influences of patient, safety event and nurse characteristics on nurse judgements of credibility, importance and intent to report patients' safety concerns.

Design: Factorial survey experiment.

Methods: A total of 240 nurses were recruited and completed an online survey including demographic information and responses to eight factorial vignettes consisting of unique combinations of eight patient and event factors. Hierarchical multivariate analysis was used to test influences of vignette factors and nurse characteristics on nurse judgements.

Results: The intraclass coefficients for nurse judgements suggest that the variation among nurses exceeded the influence of contextual vignette factors. Several significant sources of nurse variation were identified, including race/ethnicity, suggesting a complex relationship between nurses' characteristics and their potential biases, and the influence of personal and patient factors on nurses' judgements, including the decision to report safety concerns.

Conclusion: Nurses are key players in the system to manage patient safety concerns. Variation among nurses and how they respond to scenarios of patient safety concerns highlight the need for nurse-level intervention.

Implications for the profession and patient care: Complex factors influence nurses' judgement, interpretation and reporting of patients' safety concerns.

Impact: Understanding nurse judgement regarding patient-expressed safety concerns is critical for designing processes and systems that promote reporting. Multiple event and patient characteristics (type of event and apparent harm, and patient gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and communication approach) as well as participant characteristics (race/ethnicity, gender, years of experience and primary hospital area) impacted participants' judgements of credibility, degree of concern and intent to report. These findings will help guide patient safety nurse education and training.

Reporting method: STROBE guidelines.

Patient or public contribution: Members of the public, including patient advocates, were involved in content validation of the vignette scenarios, norming photographs used in the factorial survey and testing the survey functionality.