Assessment of staff attitudes to patient safety

Abstract

Safe, high-quality health care requires an open, transparent, and just culture where people are willing and have the opportunity to discuss errors and system problems and to do something about them. There is paucity of research in relation to safety issues in health care. Objective: To identify the components of a safe culture and measure staff's attitudes to those components in an area health service. Method: A mixed mode method comprising qualitative and quantitative measures was used. A 60-item survey comprising a likert response scale and measuring safety attitudes and values was administrated to 3,200 staff in an Area Health Service (AHS) in Western Sydney. Focus groups were conducted with various professional groups to provide greater depth to salient issues identified in the survey. Results: The response rate was 26%. Teamwork, communication, leadership, and performance shaping factors were identified as components of a safe working health service and that staff were committed to safety. The results show that there is a positive safety and teamwork culture. However, the results about organisational culture were not positive. Results also showed that there is a high level of stress factors that influence safety in the organisation. There were a number of attitudes and patterns that warranted improvement and further investigation. However several areas of discontent among staff in terms of leadership and communication were acknowledged. In regard to attitudes suggesting invulnerability to the effects of stress and fatigue, the majority of respondents acknowledged this belief. These findings are more favourable than those earlier studies using the Operating Room Management Attitudes Questionnaire (ORMAQ), although these were conducted in other countries and the respondents were surgeons, anaesthetists, and Intensive Care Unit staff. A number of factors have emerged both from the questionnaire survey and the follow up focus groups that should be considered. The awareness of the need to encourage teamwork, communication, leadership prevailed. Conclusion: Health care organisations can benefit from the valuable information and an understanding of staff's attitudes to patient safety. It confirms the findings of other studies that attitudes to leadership, teamwork and performance shaping factors such as fatigue and stress have an impact on an organisation's capacity to develop a culture of safety. Health care organisations need to acquire this kind of information, and build on it if they are considering developing and implementing patient safety programs.

Date of Award	2004
Original language	English