Patient safety attitude among nurses: A comparison between teaching hospitals

Abstract

Patient safety attitude perception of the nurses could represent part of the patient safety culture in the hospital setting. The existing different types of hospitals had exhibited different characteristics of patient safety attitude perception in the past. However, there was a lack of comparative study on the patient safety attitude for a different type of hospitals. The main purpose of the study was to compare the patient safety attitude perception of the nurses in teaching hospitals with different establishment periods. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2 selected teaching hospitals with a difference in characteristics. The validated Safety Attitude Questionnaire was utilized for data collection of nurses working in general medical and surgical wards via an online survey form.  A total of 152 nurses were recruited as participants with the majority coming from more established teaching hospitals [TH1] (109/152). The gender (p<0.05) and years of working experience (p=0.006) were significantly different between the two hospitals. It was found that 5 out of 6 domains of patient safety attitude revealed significantly different types of responses when compared between these two hospitals. A higher proportion of positive responses was found for the majority of items by the nurses of TH1. A teaching hospital with a longer operational duration and a bigger number of beds could influence the perception of patient safety among the nurses. Thus, policymakers could create a policy that should be able to cultivate a positive patient safety attitude specifically for the newly established hospital. One of the policies is by recommending the teaching hospital managers to practice a workplace pre-placement patient safety training briefing or short courses for the newly appointed nurses in the future.