Patient Safety Culture as Perceived by Nurses in a Joint Commission International Accredited Hospital in Turkey and its Comparison with Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Data

The first step to provide patient safety and reduce medical errors is to evaluate patient safety culture. This study aimed to evaluate patient safety culture as perceived by nurses in a Joint Commission International (JCI) accredited hospital in Turkey and compare it with Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) data.
This cross-sectional study was conducted on 70 nurses working in the clinics of a private hospital with JCI accreditation certificate in Ankara, Turkey. For the purpose of data collection, ‘‘Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture’’ was used. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 15. The rates of positive responses were calculated and compared with AHRQ data. The mean of 12 dimensions of the survey were calculated and compared with independent variables, using t-test and Kruskal Wallis test.
According to the results, ‘‘teamwork within units’’ and ‘‘staffing’’ were found to be the dimensions with the highest and lowest positive response rates, respectively. Furthermore, 78% of the nurses graded patient safety as excellent or very good and 53% of them did not report any events within the last 12 months.
This study demonstrated that ‘‘staffing’’, ‘‘non-punitive response to errors’’, ‘‘supervisor/manager expectations & actions promoting patient safety’’, ‘‘communication openness’’, and ‘‘teamwork across units’’ are the areas that need to be improved in terms of patient safety culture. Health services can be provided in a safer way in the future by conducting further studies on patient safety culture and sharing knowledge between countries.