Safety culture: Intensive Care Unit nurses’ perceptions

Abstract

Objective

To measure patient safety culture from Intensive Care Unit nurses’ perspective.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional descriptive study carried out with 65 nurses from Intensive Care Units of a tertiary public hospital, by completing the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire, using simple descriptive statistics for data analysis and following the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s guidelines.

Results

Of the total, 50% of nurses did not report any adverse events in the last 12 months; 50.8% of professionals assigned a fair score to patient safety in their work area/unit at the hospital; none of the dimensions had a rate of positive responses >75%, only isolated items such as C2 (Professionals are free to say when they see something that may negatively affect patient care), with 84.6%. Dimensions 6 (Nonpunitive responses to errors), 9 (Teamwork across hospital units) and 11 (Overall perceptions of safety) showed all items with an average percentage below (50%), and Dimension 6 (Nonpunitive responses to errors) was the weakest (22.5%).

Conclusion

This study showed a low rate of adverse event reporting and nurses’ perception of a punitive culture on the part of their superiors. Gaps in the safety culture were evidenced, which need to be reassessed in order to seek strategies to improve and strengthen care, making care increasingly qualified and safe.

Organizational culture; Critical care nursing; Patient safety; Intensive care units