Introduction: In the health care environment, the quality and safety attributes are imperative for promoting safe care, which requires the strengthening of a safety culture. General objective: To evaluate the safety climate in the perspective of health professionals in the hospitalization and intensive care units, in a public hospital specialized in cardiology, located in the City of Rio de Janeiro. Method: This is a quantitative and exploratory-descriptive study that included 391 health professionals. Data were collected between April and June 2018, using the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) instrument, translated and validated for the Portuguese language/ Brazil. The findings were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics, with a significance level of 5%, and the reliability of the questionnaire by the Cronbach α value. Results: The instrument proved to be reliable, with a total α value of 0.92, ranging from 0.70 to 0.80 in the surveyed domains. As for the characterization of the individuals, the female gender (75%) and the professionals of the nursing team (53.88%) were prevalent. The average age corresponded to 40.89 years (sd=10.06), most (75.89%) worked in the adult specialty, with an average work time in the unity of 9.77 years (sd=6.98), and 64.09% maintained thestatutory bond. Regarding the SAQ safety climate, the overall average was 66.6 (sd=15); among the domains, "Work satisfaction" showed the highest score, average of 80.79 (sd=19.56), and the lowest scores were observed in the domains of "Work conditions", average of 61.19 (sd=27.69), "Perception of unit management", 60.02 (sd=27.62), and "Perception of hospital management", 52.54 (sd=22.29). In the comparison between the domains and the sociodemographic variables, there was a statistically significant difference with regard to professional category, gender, employment bond, unit of work and age. Conclusion: The findings highlighted that the safety climate culture has weaknesses, especially with respectto managerial issues and work conditions, but professionals are satisfied with work performed. It was possible to understand that the sociodemographic variables influenced the perception of the safety climate, especially those related to professional category, gender and employment bond. Moreover, it is believed that the understanding of the climate constitutes a driving element to help us implement improvement actions for safe care.