Assessment of Attitude of Primary Care Medical Staff Toward Patient Safety Culture in Primary Health-care Centers--Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.

INTRODUCTION

An effective leadership is critical to the development of a safety culture within an organization. Patient safety in primary health care is an emerging field of research of increasing importance.

OBJECTIVE

This study has been conducted to explore the safety culture attitude toward patient safety to improve the quality and patient safety in primary health-care centers.

METHODS

A cross-sectional survey involving 288 medical staff in primary health-care centers in Al-Ahsa was conducted using an Arabic translated safety attitude questionnaire to assess the safety attitudes among health care center staff toward patient safety culture.

RESULTS

This study showed that the attitude of medical staff in primary health-care centers is somewhat positive toward patient safety culture where the average of job satisfaction score in the current study was higher at 80% and the overall score for safety climate was 68%. The overall score for safety attitudes was highest in Al-Ayoun Health Center (79%) and lowest in Al Faisaliah Health Center (58%). The score of teamwork and stress recognition was high and statistically significant (<0.05) among females. However, staff perception toward management was significantly higher (<0.05) among males. Staff perception toward management was significantly low (<0.05) among clinicians. The overall score for safety attitudes was remarkably high (<0.05) among those with less than 10 years' experience, the overall safety culture score was significantly high (<0.05) among administrative staff and all correlations were significant (<0.01) except for recognition of stress with teamwork, job satisfaction, management perception, and safety climate. In addition, there were different attitudes toward patient safety culture between gender and physician vs non-physician and management staff vs non-management staff.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggested that certain improvements are needed, especially in the field of communication and stress recognition with regard to patient safety culture.