Perception and factors associated with patient safety culture in a large tertiary hospital in Palestine

Abstract

Abstract Background Patient safety culture helps with enhancing care quality, avoiding errors, promoting clinical outcomes, and reducing healthcare costs. Also, it helps minimize unfavorable events, which increases patient safety and raises the quality of medical care provided. This study aims to assess the perception of patient safety culture in a university hospital and assess the relationship between demographic and workplace characteristics of the staff with the perceptions of patient safety culture. Methods Quantitative cross-sectional study design was used. The Arabic version of HSOPSC v2.0 was used to assess the perception of patient safety culture among hospital staff. The SurveyMonkey® online platform was used to send the surveys to all staff emails within two weeks. Descriptive statistics were used to measure the perception. Man-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and logistic regression were used to find the relations between the variables. Results “Staffing and Workplace” (59.5%) and “Response to Error” (51.9%) were found the weakest dimensions. “Teamwork” (82.5%), and the “Organizational Learning—Continuous Improvement” (81.1%) were the highest positive dimensions. The rest of the dimensions were perceived positively. Nursing staff perceived patient safety culture more positively than other professions (Mean Rank = 157.23, p-value < 0.001). The staff working in patient care units perceived patient safety culture positively more than other staff (Mean Rank = 150.86, p-value = 00.007). The staff with direct contact with patients had a more positive perception of patient safety culture (Mean Rank = 141.90, p-value < 0.001). Logistic regression found a statistically significant association between the total score of patient safety culture dimensions and staff position in the hospital (p-value = 0.003, VIF = 1.179). It also found a statistically significant association between those who have direct contact with patients and the total score of patient safety culture dimensions (p-value = 0.003, VIF = 1.208). Conclusions This study presents an assessment of patient safety culture among healthcare staff in a university hospital. The staff perceived overall patient safety culture positively. However, efforts must be done to improve the two weak dimensions. A qualitative approach study could be done to explore deeply the reasons for this weakness in these dimensions. The demographics of the staff were not associated with patient safety culture.