Do Occupational and Patient Safety Culture in Hospitals Share Predictors in the Field of Psychosocial Working Conditions? Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study in German University Hospitals

Abstract

Background: In the healthcare sector, a comprehensive safety culture includes both patient care-related and occupational aspects. In recent years, healthcare studies have demonstrated diverse relationships between aspects of psychosocial working conditions, occupational, and patient safety culture. The aim of this study was to consider and test relevant predictors for staff’s perceptions of occupational and patient safety cultures in hospitals and whether there are shared predictors. From two German university hospitals, 381 physicians and 567 nurses completed a questionnaire on psychosocial working conditions, occupational, and patient safety culture. Two regression models with predictors for occupational and patient safety culture were conceptually developed and empirically tested. In the Occupational Safety Culture model, job satisfaction (β = 0.26, p ≤ 0.001), work‒privacy conflict (β = −0.19, p ≤ 0.001), and patient-related burnout (β = −0.20, p ≤ 0.001) were identified as central predictors. Important predictors in the Patient Safety Culture model were management support for patient safety (β = 0.24, p ≤ 0.001), supervisor support for patient safety (β = 0.18, p ≤ 0.001), and staffing (β = 0.21, p ≤ 0.001). The two models mainly resulted in different predictors. However, job satisfaction and leadership seem to play an important role in both models and can be used in the development of a comprehensive management of occupational and patient safety culture.

Linking transformational leadership, patient safety culture and work engagement in home care services

“…Furthermore, as sub‐group analyses could not be justified in this study due to the small sample size, future studies should explore whether these relationships differ across occupations. For example, Wagner et al () found that hospital physicians and nurses differed in their perceptions of patient safety culture, with physicians rating the culture more positively than nurses did.…”

“…Several studies emphasize the role of leaders in building a safety culture (Merrill, ; Wagner et al, ; Wong, Cummings, & Ducharme, ). McFadden, Henagan, and Gowen () found that transformational leadership was directly related to patient safety culture and indirectly related to patient safety outcomes through culture and patient safety initiatives, such as education and training of employees and system redesign.…”

Comparing perceived psychosocial working conditions of nurses and physicians in two university hospitals in Germany with other German professionals - feasibility of scale conversion between two versions of the German Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)

“…The WorkSafeMed study ("Working conditions, safety culture and patient safety in hospitalswhat predicts the safety of the medication process") was a crosssectional, multicenter, mixed-methods project conducted between 2014 and 2017 [15][16][17][18]. The study included a staff survey using a standardized paper-based questionnaire to assess psychosocial working conditions (G-COPSOQ II), patient and occupational safety cultures [15,16], a chart review to evaluate the quality of the medication process [17] and the explorative correlation analysis of questionnaire and routine data to depict workload and quality of care [18].…”

“…The paper-based questionnaire for the staff survey in the WorkSafeMed study used common and validated instruments [15,16]. To assess psychosocial working conditions, we employed 17 scales of the G-COPSOQ II [9,19].…”

Determinants of Occupational Safety Culture in Hospitals and other Workplaces—Results from an Integrative Literature Review

“…However, in many studies, safety culture refers only to patient safety culture [6,7], and occupational safety culture of employees is not addressed. In some studies, occupational safety culture was considered in addition to patient safety culture [8][9][10][11][12][13][14], but did not represent the main aspect. The role of working conditions with regard to work-related injuries in healthcare (e.g., needle stick injuries) has been widely studied [15,16].…”