Determining nurses’ perceptions of patient safety culture in palliative care centres

Abstract

Background: Palliative care patients often do not have decision-making capacity at the end of life so this patient group is vulnerable to violations of patient safety.

Aim: To determine the attitudes of nurses in palliative care centres in Turkey towards the patient safety culture and to identify factors affecting these.

Method: A descriptive, cross-sectional design using self-report questionnaires was used.

Results: The mean Patient Safety Culture Scale points of the whole group were 2.91 ± 0.44. In the sub-dimensions of the scale, the highest points were determined in Employee Training (2.99 ± 0.51) and the lowest in Unexpected Events and Error Reporting (2.81 ± 0.54).

Conclusions: Patient safety culture is related to nurses’ working conditions and the attitude of management towards errors, etc. The results of this study will provide a contribution to the development of healthcare and healthcare training policies for critical units vulnerable to patient safety violations.

Keywords:

• patient safety
• palliative care
• medical errors
• nurse–patient relations
• safety management

ORCID

Metin Dincer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4598-945X

Nazan Torun http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1793-3248

Hurisah Aksakal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4634-8374