Perceived workload status and its relationship with patient safety culture in nurses of educational and therapeutic centers of Gorgan city in 2022

Perceived mental workload is a set of factors that affect the mental processes of information processing, decision-making and individual reactions in the work environment. Patient safety refers to the prevention of injuries caused by medical errors that occur due to negligence in the performance of duties. The present study was conducted to determine the perceived workload and its relationship with the culture of patient safety in nurses.

  This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted among the nurses of Shahid Sayad Shirazi and 5 Azar teaching hospitals in Gorgan city in 2022. In total, 280 nurses of the mentioned hospitals participated in the study. The random stratified sampling was applied and the ethics code was obtained. The data were collected by means of mental workload and patient safety culture questionnaires and it was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics methods in SPSS-24 software.

The average age and standard deviation of the nurses was 34.9 ± 9.2 years. Most of the nurses had a bachelor's degree (90.4%) and were married (71.6%). The average score and standard deviation of perceived workloads was 73.80 ± 14.74. The overall score of patient safety culture was 3.30 ± 0.26. There was no significant relationship between perceived workload and patient safety culture (P = 0.204).

The perceived workload was high among the nurses and the safety culture status was moderate.