Nurses and physicians attitudes towards factors related to hospitalized patient safety

Abstract

Introduction The attitudes of healthcare staff towards patients’ safety, including awareness of the risk for adverse events, are significant elements of an organization’s safety culture. Aim of research To evaluate nurses and physicians’ attitudes towards factors influencing hospitalized patient safety. Materials and methods The research included 606 nurses and 527 physicians employed in surgical and medical wards in 21 Polish hospitals around the country. The Polish adaptation of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) was used to evaluate the factors influencing attitudes towards patient safety. Results Both nurses and physicians scored highest in stress recognition (SR) (71.6 and 80.86), while they evaluated working conditions (WC) the lowest (45.82 and 52,09). Nurses achieved statistically significantly lower scores compared to physicians in every aspect of the safety attitudes evaluation (p<0.05). The staff working in surgical wards obtained higher scores within stress recognition (SR) compared to the staff working in medical wards (78.12 vs. 73.72; p = 0.001). Overall, positive working conditions and effective teamwork can contribute to improving employees’ attitudes towards patient safety. Conclusions The results help identify unit level vulnerabilities associated with staff attitudes toward patient safety. They underscore the importance of management strategies that account for staff coping with occupational stressors to improve patient safety.

The Perception of the Patient Safety Climate by Health Professionals during the COVID-19 Pandemic—International Research

“…According to this research, healthcare workers with the shortest seniority demonstrated a better awareness of the negative impact of stress on patient safety. These results are similar to the results obtained by Malinowska-Lipień et al [ 1 ], which documented that the increase in seniority corresponds to the decrease in stress recognition.…”

“…Nurses achieved statistically significantly lower scores compared to physicians in every aspect of the safety attitudes evaluation ( p < 0.05). Overall, positive working conditions and effective teamwork can contribute to improving employees’ attitudes toward patient safety [ 1 ].…”

“…There are numerous definitions of patient safety in the literature. According to the World Health Organization (WHO): “patient safety means the reduction to an acceptable minimum level of risk of unnecessary harm related to health care” [ 1 ]. The agency Safety Improvement for Patients in Europe asserted that patient safety focuses on identifying, analyzing, and minimizing patient risk [ 2 , 3 ].…”

“…The attitudes of health professionals toward patient safety, including the awareness of the risk of adverse events, are important elements of the organization’s safety culture [ 5 ]. Therefore, using tools such as the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) for assessing healthcare staff attitudes about patient safety at the organizational level is an important part of fostering organizational change to improve patient safety [ 1 , 5 ]. High awareness of occupational safety, teamwork, assessment of the culture of occupational safety, as well as analysis and drawing conclusions, can improve the quality and safety of services and make the patient feel safer [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

“…A safety climate is not only important for reducing the risk for harm to patients but is also key to ensuring a safe working environment for healthcare professionals. A first step toward building safety cultures is to conduct research to assess healthcare workers’ attitudes toward patient safety [ 1 ]. The current knowledge about the patient safety culture in the healthcare system and the research tools used to assess the safety climate in hospitals is insufficient, which may hinder current efforts to improve patient safety worldwide [ 6 ].…”