Investigation of Nurses' Behavior and Awareness of Work Environment Safety: The Case of a Public Hospital in Konya Province

Abstract

The aim of this study was to reveal the behaviors and awareness of nurses about workplace safety. The population of the study consisted of 557 active nurses working in a public hospital in Konya province. Online survey technique was used as a data collection tool. The questionnaire consists of 4 sections and 26 questions. The first part consists of questions about sociodemographic characteristics, the second part consists of the safety awareness questionnaire, the third part consists of the safety behavior scale and the fourth part consists of the reporting culture questionnaire. It was determined that the data obtained showed a normal distribution. Independent groups t, one-way variance, Pearson correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis were applied on the data. Of the 394 nurses who participated in the study, 84.5% were female, 27.9% were in the 23-30 age range, 75.1% were undergraduate graduates, 43.7% were ward nurses, and 28.2% had 20 years or more experience. Again, 61.4% of the participants stated that they had never made a medical error in their unit, 51.0% stated that they had experienced a near-miss incident in their unit, and 53.6% stated that they had witnessed medical errors in their unit before. As a result of the study, it was seen that the safety awareness, safe behavior and reporting culture of the nurses participating in the study were high. It was concluded that an increase in safety awareness leads to an increase in safety behavior and reporting culture levels.