Comparison of patient safety culture among psychiatric, general, and specialized hospitals of Tehran

Abstract

Patient safety culture (PSC) has been considered less than its significance within high risk health care facilities so far. The aim of this study was to firstly compare PSC among psychiatric, general, and critical/intensive care systems then, focus on common weaknesses between Middle East countries. The study design was cross-sectional which was executed by using of a two stage sampling frame. Researchers had 298 questionnaire completed (RR=62%) among three groups comprising nurses, nurse’s aides, and laboratory personnel. The Farsi version of Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire was employed in this study. Descriptive statistics, and One Way ANOVA were used aiming to analyze collected data by using of SPSS 20. The highest percent of composite mean scores in Specialized, Psychiatric, and Generals were 61.49%, 56.67%, and 55.69% respectively. Common weakest dimensions of PSC among the three groups of hospitals included: Non-punitive response to error (24.3%), Staffing (32.18%), and Communication openness (42.44%). There were no significant differences among means and variences of the three groups of hospitals. It can be concluded that health care systems may have no differences in PSC correspond to disparities in amount of risk and job pressure. An implication of this study is the possibility that PSC is mostly local, although some weaknesses between our study and Middle East seemed to be symmetrical.