Patient safety culture: Insights from a cross-sectional study among healthcare professionals.

Abstract

Introduction: The classical definition of patient safety given by the IOM is, "the prevention of harm to patients." To expect error less performance from human beings working in a complex, highly challenging, and stressful health care environment is unrealistic. The emphasis must be on fostering a culture of safety that involves multiple stakeholders including healthcare workers, healthcare organizations, and patients.

Aim: To assess the culture of patient safety among healthcare professionals.

Settings and design: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using a pre-validated survey instrument in a tertiary care pediatric hospital.

Methods and material: The data were collected over a period of 1 month (from 4^th January 2022 to 5^th February 2022) using pre-validated questionnaire based on "Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS™) Hospital Survey Version 2.0 (SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0)". Both web-based and paper-based questionnaire forms were distributed among the health care workers.

Results: Totally, 61% of the respondents had average positive response to patient safety, 75% positive response about communication of patient safety error and 74% about teamwork in crisis. A total of 74% responded that supervisors or clinical leaders support them in pursuit of patient safety, 73% about proper handovers. About 69% mentioned about a culture of organizational learning and continuous improvement, 59% reported any patient safety event, 49% believed in support from Hospital management and 42% believed that if a patient safety error is reported it is responded to positively by the seniors by taking corrective measures.

Conclusions: The study presented with a plethora of outcomes that can be used for promoting safe healthcare. A policy for continuous improvement should be implemented to ensure the culture of safe and sustainable patient care.