Assessing the Trends of Patient Safety Culture from Viewpoints of Physicians and Nurses Based on Safety Attitudes Questionnaire of a State-Owned Regional Hospital in Taiwan

Abstract

Regularly assessing the perceptions of physicians and nurses in patient safety culture is critically important to enhance patient safety and reduce medical errors in healthcare organizations because physicians and nurses are the core staffs in healthcare organizations. This study uses six dimensions of safety attitudes questionnaire to examine whether or not physicians and nurses perceive differently in patient safety culture in 2016 and 2017. Mann-Whitney U test for two independent samples is used to compare if the perceptions of physicians and nurses in 2016 and 2017 are different statistically. The results show that physicians and nurses do not have different perceptions in safety climate, perceptions of management, and job satisfaction. Stress recognition has been improved from 2016 to 2017. On the contrary, teamwork climate and working conditions are getting worse from 2016 to 2017. Therefore, hospital management needs to pay much attention to improve teamwork climate and working conditions for physicians and nurses in order to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors in this state-owned regional hospital.  Index Terms-patient safety culture, safety attitudes questionnaire, state-owned regional hospital, Mann-Whitney U test for two independent samples