Assessment and Comparison of Patient Safety Culture Among Health-Care Providers in Shenzhen Hospitals

Abstract

Purpose

To investigate the health-care providers’ perceptions of patient safety culture in Shenzhen hospitals and to compare 2019 with 2015 data.

Methods

This cross-sectional study adopted a questionnaire survey and targeted hospital staff fitting the sampling criteria (physicians, nurses, technicians, and managers). A total of 5490 staff from 13 Shenzhen hospitals were surveyed using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC).

Results

The average positive response rates of this study were generally higher than the data from the 2018 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) survey and the 2015 HSOPSC Shenzhen survey. Bivariate and multivariate regression showed that respondents who had direct contact with patients were less likely to report high overall patient safety grade. The probability of high overall patient safety grade was rated higher by men than by women. Compared with nurses, the probability of high overall patient safety grade was higher for both physicians and technicians.

Conclusion

The overall results of the patient safety culture in Shenzhen hospitals were relatively good and have improved significantly in recent years, but some areas of weakness still need improvement. Our recommendations are to develop training programs for various positions, recruit more employees, provide management support, and establish a just culture to promote a strong patient safety culture. Regular assessment is also needed to provide valuable information to hospital leaders on areas requiring improvement and to evaluate the quality improvement plan that has been implemented.

Keywords:

• patient safety culture
• HSOPSC
• public hospital

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Fund of Shenzhen Public Hospital Management Center [grant number 20199660001] and Young Teacher Research Fund of Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University [grant number 20195720011]. This work was also a project of Shenzhen Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences.