Patient Safety Culture and Nursing Work Environment: Evidences from Iran

Patient safety is a universal problem, has still many gaps needing to research. Nurses are the hospitals largest workforce; play a vital role in hospitals profitability and patient safety indices. This study aimed to evaluate the perception of nurses regarding the patient safety culture and nursing work environment. This cross- sectional design study was carried out with 100 nurses. We used “Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture” questionnaire for data collection. Survey forms were distributed to the nurses during July 1st- 30st July of 2017. Data were analyzed using SPSS 19. The positive response rates varied between 7-82% for the 42 items of the questionnaire. The item "When one area in this ward gets really busy, others help out" had the highest positive response rate (82%), whereas the item "We have enough staff to handle the workload" had the lowest positive response rate (7%). The domain with the lowest positive response rate was “Staffing “(21%), while the highest positive response rate belonged to “Teamwork within wards“(76%). Our study indicated that nurses had a positive perception about the teamwork in their works; however, they believed that the number of staff to manage the workload was insufficient and this sometimes causes the poor relationships between staffs. Accreditation as an external quality evaluation tool, can help to the creation of patient safety culture. To research the influence of hospital accreditation on patient safety culture in Iran, further studies could be done.