A nationwide Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture in Belgian hospitals: setting priorities at the launch of a 5-year patient safety plan.

Link to article at PubMed

A nationwide Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture in Belgian hospitals: setting priorities at the launch of a 5-year patient safety plan.

BMJ Qual Saf. 2012 Sep;21(9):760-7

Authors: Vlayen A, Hellings J, Claes N, Peleman H, Schrooten W

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To measure patient safety culture in Belgian hospitals and to examine the homogeneous grouping of underlying safety culture dimensions.

METHODS: The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture was distributed organisation-wide in 180 Belgian hospitals participating in the federal program on quality and safety between 2007 and 2009. Participating hospitals were invited to submit their data to a comparative database. Homogeneous groups of underlying safety culture dimensions were sought by hierarchical cluster analysis.

RESULTS: 90 acute, 42 psychiatric and 11 long-term care hospitals submitted their data for comparison to other hospitals. The benchmark database included 55?225 completed questionnaires (53.7% response rate). Overall dimensional scores were low, although scores were found to be higher for psychiatric and long-term care hospitals than for acute hospitals. The overall perception of patient safety was lower in French-speaking hospitals. Hierarchical clustering of dimensions resulted in two distinct clusters. Cluster I grouped supervisor/manager expectations and actions promoting safety, organisational learning-continuous improvement, teamwork within units and communication openness, while Cluster II included feedback and communication about error, overall perceptions of patient safety, non-punitive response to error, frequency of events reported, teamwork across units, handoffs and transitions, staffing and management support for patient safety.

CONCLUSION: The nationwide safety culture assessment confirms the need for a long-term national initiative to improve patient safety culture and provides each hospital with a baseline patient safety culture profile to direct an intervention plan. The identification of clusters of safety culture dimensions indicates the need for a different approach and context towards the implementation of interventions aimed at improving the safety culture. Certain clusters require unit level improvements, whereas others demand a hospital-wide policy.

PMID: 22927488 [PubMed - in process]

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