Attitudes of Healthcare Professionals and Internship Students Toward Patient Safety During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Qom, Iran, 2021

The main problems endangering patient safety are errors and accidents caused by healthcare providers, mainly due to their unfavorable patient safety attitudes.

This research aims to investigate the attitudes of healthcare professionals and internship students toward patient safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A cross-sectional study was conducted. Using the convenience sampling method, 232 healthcare professionals and students under training and internships were selected in intestinal care units, general wards, and operating room departments in 3 teaching hospitals affiliated withQomUniversity of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran. Data gathering was performed during August and September 2021, when the majority of visits to the hospitals were related to patients with COVID-19. The inclusion criteria included medical staff and students with at least six months of work experience in hospitals admitting COVID-19 patients. The exclusion criteria were unwillingness to participate, withdrawal from the study, and not completing the research. The Data collection tool was the Safety Attitude Questionnaire.

Most of the study participants were nurses (73.27%), women (55.60%), married (56.47%), and with lower incomes than expenses (50%). The mean safety attitude score of the participants was 99.07± 16.31. Average scores of safety attitude in groups of nurses, nursing internship, operating room nurses, and operating room internship were 98.69, 100.26, 108.16, and 96.40, respectively. Pearson correlation test showed no significant correlation between the safety attitude scores of healthcare professionals andtheir age (P = 0.652) and workexperience (P = 0.441). Basedonthe Kruskal-Wallis test, the income status perception of the study participants was significantly correlated with their safety attitude scores (P = 0.001).

The COVID-19 pandemic had not a significant effect on the attitude of healthcare professionals in comparison with previous studies. However, in this study, the attitudes of the healthcare professionals and interns were inappropriate. It is recommended that specialized training courses on how to deal with crises such as pandemics be planned and held for healthcare providers.