PURPOSE Knowledge about safety climate is fundamental to improving patient safety in health care organizations. Because individual and organizational factors influence the safety climate, we conducted a health care survey of German family practices so we could analyze the impact of the professional group, the professional experience of practice staff, and practice characteristics on perceptions of the safety climate. METHODSWe wrote to health care assistants and doctors in 1,800 randomly selected family practices in Germany and asked them to complete a newly developed and validated Frankfurt Patient Safety Climate Questionnaire. We conducted a descriptive analyses of items and climate factors, as well as regression analysis, to identify potential predictors of the safety climate in family practice. RESULTSThe response rate from the participating practices was 36.1%. Safety climate was perceived to be generally positive with the exception of the factors of error management and perception of the causes of errors. We discovered that whether or not the entire team had taken part in the survey had a positive influence on most factors. Doctors had more positive perceptions of 4 of 7 factors addressed to both professions. Male participants and doctors showed the most willingness to admit they had made an error.

German Clinical Trials Register (Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien, DRKS) No. DRKS00000145.

BACKGROUND Safety culture has been identified as having a major impact on how safety is managed in healthcare. However, it has not received much attention in general practices. Hence, no instrument yet exists to assess safety climate-the measurable artefact of safety culture-in this setting. This study aims to evaluate psychometric properties of a newly developed safety climate questionnaire for use in German general practices. METHODS The existing Safety Attitudes Questionnaire, Ambulatory Version, was considerably modified and enhanced in order to be applicable in general practice. After pilot tests and its application in a random sample of 400 German practices, a first psychometric analysis led to modifications in several items. A further psychometric analysis was conducted with an additional sample of 60 practices and a response rate of 97.08%. Exploratory factor analysis with orthogonal varimax rotation was carried out and the internal consistency of the identified factors was calculated. RESULTS Nine factors emerged, representing a wide range of dimensions associated with safety culture: teamwork climate, error management, safety of clinical processes, perception of causes of errors, job satisfaction, safety of office structure, receptiveness to healthcare assistants and patients, staff perception of management, and quality and safety of medical care. Internal consistency of factors is moderate to good. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates the development of a patient safety climate instrument. The questionnaire displays established features of safety climate and additionally contains features that might be specific to small-scale general practices.

Background Colorectal cancer is one leading cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality. Its prognosis depends largely on tumour stage at diagnosis. Migration status was associated with late stage at diagnosis in some studies, yet results are inconsistent. Methods The cross-sectional study “The Diagnostics of Colorectal Carcinoma in Migrants and Non-Migrants in Germany” (KoMigra) investigated the association between migration background and tumour stage of colorectal cancer at diagnosis in a large German urban area. Patient variables were collected via a survey translated into nine languages. Data on tumour stage were extracted from medical records. Results 437 patients could be recruited for analysis. Explorative logistic regression yielded no significant difference for tumour stage “I” versus “II-IV” according to the tumour classification “Union Internationale Contre le Cancer” (UICC) between migrants and non-migrants. Although the odds of a higher tumour stage were consistently higher in migrants than non-migrants, the effect estimates had wide confidence intervals. In descriptive analyses, migrants reported symptoms more often and for longer time than non-migrants. This was especially true for patients with poor proficiency of German. Conclusions Migration background was not significantly associated with advanced tumour stage at diagnosis. However, the effect of poor language proficiency should be explored further.

BackgroundIn Germany, about 20% of the total population have a migration background. Differences exist between migrants and non-migrants in terms of health care access and utilisation. Colorectal cancer is the second most common malignant tumour in Germany, and incidence, staging and survival chances depend, amongst other things, on ethnicity and lifestyle. The current study investigates whether stage at diagnosis differs between migrants and non-migrants with colorectal cancer in an area of high migration and attempts to identify factors that can explain any differences.Methods/DesignData on tumour and migration status will be collected for 1,200 consecutive patients that have received a new, histologically verified diagnosis of colorectal cancer in a high migration area in Germany in the previous three months. The recruitment process is expected to take 16 months and will include gastroenterological private practices and certified centres for intestinal diseases. Descriptive and analytical analysis will be performed: the distribution of variables for migrants versus non-migrants and participants versus non-participants will be analysed using appropriate χ2-, t-, F- or Wilcoxon tests. Multivariable, logistic regression models will be performed, with the dependent variable being the dichotomized stage of the tumour (UICC stage I versus more advanced than UICC stage I). Odds ratios and associated 95%-confidence intervals will be calculated. Furthermore, ordered logistic regression models will be estimated, with the exact stage of the tumour at diagnosis as the dependent variable. Predictors used in the ordered logistic regression will be patient characteristics that are specific to migrants as well as patient characteristics that are not. Interaction models will be estimated in order to investigate whether the effects of patient characteristics on stage of tumour at the time of the initial diagnosis is different in migrants, compared to non-migrants.DiscussionAn association of migration status or other socioeconomic variables with stage at diagnosis of colorectal cancer would be an important finding with respect to equal health care access among migrants. It would point to access barriers or different symptom appraisal and, in the long term, could contribute to the development of new health care concepts for migrants.Trial registrationGerman Clinical Trials Register DRKS00005056.