Measuring the current patient safety culture in public general hospitals of Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Ethiopia: perspective of health care workers

Abstract

ackground: Patient safety is crucial to the quality of patient care and remains challenging for countries at all levels of development. There is a popular acknowledgement of the importance of establishing patient safety culture in healthcare organizations. As a result, assessing patient safety culture and frequent event reporting in healthcare organizations has become a common activity to improve quality of health care. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the current patient safety culture from the perspective of healthcare workers in Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region Public General Hospitals. Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted from February 16 to March 16, 2015 using Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire, which has 12 dimensions. Overall, we distributed 540 questionnaires and received 433 respondents. Patient safety grade and number of event reports computed descriptively. Then, the effect of various independent variables on frequency of events reported had assessed using multiple linear regressions analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. In all cases, P < 0.05 and 95% confidence interval had used to check statistical associations. Results: The overall patient safety grade as rated by the participants was acceptable (58.4%) and poor (20.1%). PSC (patient safety culture) dimensions found to have a significant association with frequency of events reported in the studied hospitals. Overall perceptions of safety and Non-punitive response to error were positively associated with frequency of events reported (β=1.052, 0.44, P=0.000). Organizational learning and continuous improvement, Communication openness and feedback about error, Teamwork across and within hospital unit were also positively associated with frequency of events reported at (P < 0.001). Conclusion: This study indicated that poor PSC dimension system and low event reporting frequency in the respective hospitals, and there should be strong work on PSC dimension to increase frequency of event reporting.