Patient safety climate perceptions in hospitals

Almost one in every ten patients is injured while receiving health care, many of these suffer disabling injuries or death each year. Understanding the importance and the negative impact of patient safety failures globally, and the influence that safety culture and climate have on the adoption of safer decisions and actions, this study aimed to analyze patient safety culture in hospitals through the measurement of safety climate. This study is a quantitative, cross- sectional Survey, in which data collection was conducted using the cultural adaptation to Brazil of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) - Short Form 2006. The study took place in two general hospitals, one public and one private, located in different metropolitan areas in the state of São Paulo. Physicians, registered nurses, nursing technicians and assistants, physical therapists, pharmacists and nutritionists, who had been working in those hospitals for at least 6 months, for a minimum of 20 hours per week, constituted the study population. A pilot study was carried out with 25 professionals in each hospital and the prevalence resulted was used to calculate the sample size at 5% significance level, 10% relative error, and 20% loss, resulting in a total of 235 participants. Professionals chosen as part of the sample were drawn up using computerized simple random sampling. The Kolmogorov- Smirnov test showed that the variables were not normal. Thus, the Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the values of the scores between hospitals and between professional categories. Regarding the results, we noted a participation rate of 86.8% of the sample selected, prevailing subjects with 5-20 years of time in the specialty, female, and members of the nursing team. There were no significant differences among the scores obtained by the two hospitals. Study participants had a negative perception regarding patient safety climate, with the domains Stress Recognition and Perception of Management presenting negative results, both for the sample as a whole and by the hospital. The domains Teamwork Climate, Job Satisfaction and Safe Behavior/Safe Practices resulted in positive perceptions for all professional categories. Contrarily, the domain Perception of Hospital Management resulted in a negative perception for all of the categories. Nursing technicians and assistants, and physicians were the groups that presented negative perceptions in the most domains. Conversely, registered nurses were the only ones who presented positive patient safety climate, with the SAQ total score showing a significant difference when compared to all other categories, and presenting positive perception in more domains. We concluded that approaches regarding professionals\' Stress Recognition and Perception of Management are of great need. The results among professional categories differed with respect to the perceptions of patient safety attitude. Thus, the development of safety culture must include all professional categories, since it comprises the entire organization, emphasizing the need for specific actions with respect to the category of physicians and nursing technicians and assistants. Moreover, it was evident that the registered nurses can play an important role in leadership of quality improvement processes, placing these professionals in prime position to drive continuous quality improvement efforts in health services (AU)