The Status of Patient Safety Culture in Nurses of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ardabil, Iran during the Outbreak of COVID-19, in 2020

Patient safety is one of the basic principles of health care and the investigation of patient safety culture is a step towards providing safe conditions for patient care. The aim of this study was to evaluate the patient safety culture in nurses working in the care wards of patients with COVID-19 in Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ardabil, Iran.

The present descriptive-analytical study was performed on 150 nurses working in Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ardabil, Iran during the outbreak of COVID-19 disease. The tool used was the Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture Questionnaire (HSOPSC) consisting of 42 questions and 12 dimensions. The sampling method was the census. Data analysis was performed in SPSS software version 22.

The overall average percentage of positive responses to 12 dimensions of safety culture was 66.33%, the highest score was related to the field of "teamwork within the unit" (82%) and the lowest score was related to the areas of "Non-Punitive Response to Error" (20%) and "teamwork Across units" (20%). According to the independent t-test, there was a significant relationship between marriage and work shift and patient safety culture. Also, based on one-way analysis of variance, there was a significant relationship between age, employment status and work experience with patient safety culture.

The status of patient safety culture was moderate among the nurses. Improving the patientchr('39')s safety culture is essential to improving patient care indicators. Also, special attention should be paid to the dimensions with the low average in this study in order to improve and strengthen these dimensions.