Determination of the patient safety culture among nurses working at intensive care units

OBJECTIVE To determine the patient safety culture among nurses working at intensive care units. METHODS This descriptive study was conducted at intensive care units of Health Practice and Research Center of Erciyes University and Kayseri Education and Research Hospital in the city center of Kayseri in Turkey. Three hundred sixteen nurses working at intensive care units at these hospitals were included in the study. Data were collected by using Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC), developed by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Percentage distribution and Mann Whitney U Test were used to analyze the data. RESULTS About 13.6% of the nurses working at intensive care units stated that they faced incidents of potential threat to the patient safety and that 48.8% of these cases were falls. Although a great majority of the nurses (88%) indicated that they never documented a case report, they assessed the patient safety in their institution as acceptable (43%). Out of the 12 dimensions of Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, the percentage of positive responses was the highest for "teamwork within units" dimension and lowest for the "non-punitive response to error" dimension. CONCLUSION Awareness of the nurses regarding patient safety should be raised and their related knowledge should be kept up-to-date through more frequent in-service trainings.