Patient safety culture among nursing professionals in the intensive care environment ^*

ABSTRACT

Objective

To analyze the patient safety culture among intensive care nursing professionals.

Method

This is a cross-sectional study carried out in Intensive Care Units of a public hospital. Data collection was carried out from September to October 2017 with nursing professionals, using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire. Cronbach’s Alpha, Pearson’s Chi-Square or Fischer’s Exact tests (5% significance level) were performed.

Results

The final sample consisted of a total of 163 nursing professionals. No strong areas were observed for patient safety. The dimensions “teamwork in the unit”, “expectations and actions of the supervisor/manager for the promotion of patient safety” and “organizational learning and continuous improvement” had the highest rates of positive responses, whereas the dimensions “opening for communication” and “feedback and communication about the error” had the lowest percentages. The general degree of patient safety was considered very good 72 (47%) and underreporting of the events was observed, most of them were carried out by nurses.

Conclusion

No dimension assessed was considered to be a strong area. However, most were shown to be potential areas for patient safety culture.

Patient Safety; Organizational Culture; Intensive Care Units; Nursing