Safety culture and adverse event reporting in Ghanaian healthcare facilities: Implications for patient safety

Abstract

Introduction Recognizing the values and norms significant to healthcare organizations (Safety Culture) are the prerequisites for safety and quality care. Understanding the safety culture is essential for improving undesirable workforce attitudes and behaviours such as lack of adverse event reporting. The study assessed the frequency of adverse event reporting, the patient safety culture determinants of the adverse event reporting, and the implications for Ghanaian healthcare facilities. Methods The study employed a multi-centre cross-sectional survey on 1651 health professionals in 13 healthcare facilities in Ghana using the Survey on Patient Safety (SOPS) Culture, Hospital Survey questionnaire. Analyses included descriptive, Spearman Rho correlation, one-way ANOVA, and a Binary logistic regression model. Results The majority of health professionals had at least reported adverse events in the past 12 months across all 13 healthcare facilities. Teamwork (Mean: 4.18, SD: 0.566) and response to errors (Mean: 3.40, SD: 0.742) were the satisfactory patient safety culture. The patient safety culture dimensions were statistically significant (χ2 (9, N = 1642) = 69.28, p < .001) in distinguishing between participants who frequently reported adverse events and otherwise. Conclusion Promoting an effective patient safety culture is the ultimate way to overcome the challenges of adverse event reporting, and this can effectively be dealt with by developing policies to regulate the incidence and reporting of adverse events. The quality of healthcare and patient safety can also be enhanced when healthcare managers dedicate adequate support and resources to ensure teamwork, effective communication, and blame-free culture.

Patient Safety Culture in a Tertiary Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…In general, the PS rating valued by professionals was high. This result is consistent with those carried out in other countries such as Ghana [32], and contrary to other studies where the perception is lower, such as those carried out in Latin American countries [37], southwestern Ethiopia [33], Malaysia [38], Iran [39] and national studies [17,28]. The qualification had a significantly higher percentage of positive responses in professionals with time worked in the hospital between 1 and 5 years.…”

“…Some investigations show that a lack of knowledge of the registration system may be the main cause of underreporting of incidents [34]. The results of this study add to the already existing knowledge that teamwork and the support of those responsible for units found results in an increase in the notification of incidents and improvement of PS [32,[35][36][37]. In the same way, the number of incidents reported in this hospital is far from the data of national studies, where the majority of respondents did not report any event related to PS in the last year [17,28].…”

“…The number of incidents reported is among the rates achieved in other studies whose objective is the assessment of PS, finding no differences with those carried out by Abuosi et al [32] or Wami et al [33]. One cause of this may be the widespread knowledge that exists in the hospital of the regional incident notification system.…”

Predictive modeling of burnout based on organizational culture perceptions among health systems employees: a comparative study using correlation, decision tree, and Bayesian analyses

“…One factor is perceived organizational support, which includes support from leaders and transformational leaders who listen to and address employees’ concerns 13 . Other factors include teamwork, peer relationships, the ability to develop in one’s role, involving employees in decision-making, blamelessness when employees make mistakes, and how employees treat customers 14 – 18 . Among operating room nurses, for example, teamwork is imperative to cultivating respect among co-workers and is one indicator of a positive OC 16 , 19 .…”

Nurses’ perceptions of patient safety competency: A cross-sectional study of relationships with occurrence and reporting of adverse events

“…However, to our knowledge, this is the first study that has examined the relationship between nurses’ perception of patient safety competency and AEs in Iran. Estimating the prevalence of AEs, timely reporting and identifying, and analyzing the leading factors are key preventive strategies [ 24 ]. Finally, considering the ever-changing nature of healthcare systems, changes in patient safety practices, and the need for continuous improvement in patient care carrying out new studies to provide valuable insights and contribute to this field’s expanding body of knowledge are necessary.…”