Improving patient safety at pediatric intensive care units: Exploring healthcare providers' perspective

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Safety culture environment is one of the main barriers to improve patient care safety. Assessment of healthcare providers’ perspectives towards patient safety and its no-blame culture helps to identify the most problematic areas for improvement.

Objectives: The researchers attempted to assess healthcare providers’ perspectives towards patient safety culture in one of the challenging high risk environment, hence establishing priorities for the patient safety improvement.

Methods: This exploratory study adopted a qualitative design, it was conducted in the four general Pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) of Cairo University Children Hospital in Egypt, recruiting 30 healthcare providers for Focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviewing 8 hospital key personnel using semi-structured guide consisted of open-ended questions followed by brain storming sessions.

Results: The participants’ age ranged from 25 to 48 years, their median work duration in the hospital was11 years and 84.9% of them had never attended patient safety training. All participants saw patient safety as an important aspect of patient care quality and a priority to the hospital and that proper incidence reporting, infection control, team work and non-punitive culture can improve patient safety practices. The most prioritized intervention to be implemented is to ‘conduct patient safety training sessions’.

Conclusion: All participants had positive attitude towards patient safety culture. The PICUs patient safety practices had much room for improvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Patient safety
• PICUs
• healthcare providers

Acknowledgment

Thanks to all healthcare providers and quality department team members who participated in the study and facilitated the field work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hend Aly Sabry

Hend Aly Sabry: MD Public Health & Community Medicine. Lecturer of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, CU & of biostatistics and research methodology at AFCM. International Publications in Patient safety, Women’s Health, Health systems & policy, Infection control & child nutrition.

Mona Adel Soliman

Mona Adel Soliman: Lecturer of Public Health and community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. She had a diploma in clinical nutrition and certified as nutrition specialist from the Egyptian Medical Syndicate. She is interested in health education, lifestyle modification and health care management.

Hafez Mahmoud Bazaraa

Hafez Mahmoud Bazaraa: Professor of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. Head of the Pediatric Intensive Care Units, Cairo University Pediatrics hospitals. Previous manager of Cairo University Pediatrics hospitals. Successfully achieved an MD degree in Pediatrics in May 2002. He sub-specialized in Hepatology.

Amira Aly Hegazy

Amira Aly Hegazy: Lecturer of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. Successfully achieved an MD degree in Public Health and Community Medicine in May 2019. Successfully passed the European Society for parenteral and enteral nutrition (ESPEN) diploma in April 2018.