Nurses' perceptions of patient safety culture in intensive care units: A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Patient safety culture is a relatively new focus where little is known about its current status in Egypt’s teaching hospitals, mainly intensive care units (ICUs). Therefore, the authors of this study attempted to assess the patient safety culture dimensions from the nurses’ perspective. METHODS: An exploratory cross-sectional study was conducted in two ICUs (pediatric ICU and adult ICU) at the University Hospital over 3 months from October till December 2018. Sixty nurses were interviewed using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture. RESULTS: The current study findings revealed an average positive response to individual items ranging from 6% to 51%. The “Organizational learning” dimension had the highest average percent positive patient safety dimension score (51%) among all respondents, while the “Frequency of events reported” dimension had the lowest one (6%). No statistically significant difference was reported between the pediatric and adult ICUs for all mean scores except for the “Non-punitive response to error” dimension which was reported to be greater in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) compared to adult ICU (P < 0.005). The overall patient safety grade was rated acceptable by 47.5% of the interviewed nurses. CONCLUSION: The current study shows that patient safety is fragile in ICUs, and more effort is recommended to increase the awareness of health care providers. Also, hospital managers need to enhance the performance and practices of patient safety within a non-punitive reporting environment.