Attitudes of doctors and nurses to patient safety and errors in medical practice in the Gaza-Strip: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

ObjectivesThis study examined the attitudes of nurses and doctors to key patient safety concepts, evaluated differences and similarities between professional groups and assessed positive and negative attitudes to identify target areas for future training.SettingFour major governmental hospitals in the Gaza-Strip.ParticipantsA convenience sample of 424 nurses and 150 physicians working for at least 6 months in the study hospitals.Primary and secondary outcome measuresThe primary outcome measures were mean scores with SD as measured for individual items and nine main patient safety domains assessed by the Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire. Secondary outcome measures were the proportions of doctors and nurses, that gave a positive response to each item, represented as percentage of each group.ResultsNurses and doctors held moderately positive attitudes towards patient safety with five out of nine domain scores >3.5 of 5. Doctors showed slightly more positive attitudes than nurses, despite a smaller proportion of doctors having received patient safety training with 37.5% compared with 41.9% of nurses. Both professions displayed their most positive patient safety attitudes in the same domains (‘team functioning’ and ‘working hours as a cause for error’), as well as their two most negative attitudes (‘importance of patient safety in the curriculum’ and ‘professional incompetence as a cause of error’), demonstrating significant deficits in understanding medical errors. A specific challenge will be the negative attitudes of both professions towards patient safety training for wider dissemination of this content in the postgraduate curriculum.ConclusionPatient safety attitudes were moderately positive in both professional groups. Target of future patient safety training should be enhancing the understanding of error in medicine. Any training has to be motivating and relevant for clinicians, demonstrating its importance in ongoing professional learning.

Undergraduate medical students’ attitudes towards medical errors and patient safety: a multi-center cross-sectional study in the Gaza Strip, Palestine

“…Patient safety attitudes influence patient outcomes, with positive attitudes being linked to more positive patient outcomes and vice versa [41,42]. Patient safety outcomes were found to be moderately positive among healthcare providers in Palestine [25,[43][44][45], despite a paucity of structured patient safety training. So far, patient safety content has not been represented well in post-and undergraduate training of healthcare professionals in low-and middle-income countries [21], and Palestine is no different.…”

“…Some patient safety concepts, such as the importance of teamwork and communication, benefitted from wide global exposure, also within specific emergency training courses. Other concepts have been less prominent, such as involving patients in their care, which remains a challenge in many settings [5,[25][26][27]. Furthermore, concepts, such as the systems approach to ensure patient safety, error causation in medicine and the importance of error reporting contribute to the improvement of patient safety understanding [10,[28][29][30][31][32].…”

“…'Disclosure training' proved to be useful in organisations, both to motivate staff to report incidences and to develop an organisational culture to learn from them [38][39][40]. In settings, where patient safety contents have not been integrated in the undergraduate or postgraduate curricula, error disclosure, understanding errors and learning from errors can be more challenging [21,25,26]. Hence, inclusion of such contents in the undergraduate curriculum remains a pressing issue in many areas.…”

Behavioural changes in medication safety: Consequent to an action research intervention

“…To fulfil the study purpose, we tried to engage ED staff and managers in the MS change process. Literature suggests that engaging staff in planning for organisational changes may reduce their resistance to change and improve cooperation (Bottcher et al., 2019). Providing equivalent decision‐making power to employees and managers is associated with constructive organisational improvements (Milton, Chaboyer, Åberg, Andersson, & Oxelmark, 2020).…”

Segurança do paciente cardiovascular: análise de documentos norteadores da formação em enfermagem

“…No Brasil, tal necessidade formativa é apoiada pelo Programa Nacional de Segurança do Paciente (PNSP) (Ministério da Saúde, 2012) e Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais dos Cursos de Graduação em Enfermagem (Ministério da Educação, 2001). Estes fomentam formar para atender às necessidades sociais de segurança e qualidade na assistência à saúde, necessidade basal às transformações necessárias nas redes de atenção à saúde ainda com prejuízos decorrentes de iatrogenias e eventos adversos preveníveis (Bottcher, et al, 2019).…”