Survey of attitudes about patient safety in pre-hospital emergency operating staff of Mashhad-Iran in 2019

Background and Aims: patient safety is a very important and necessary component and one of the main elements of quality in health and medical organizations, despite this, the patient safety situation in the pre-hospital emergency system is very ambiguous and there is almost no information about adverse complications. Assessing the current safety culture can be a starting point for improving safety attitudes among health service workers, including pre-hospital emergency workers who are at the forefront of managing patients in critical conditions. This study was conducted with the aim of determining the attitude about patient safety in operational staff of pre-hospital emergency in Mashhad-Iran in 2019. Materials and Methods: The present descriptive-cross-sectional study was conducted in all pre-hospital emergency centers of Mashhad in 2019. The research samples included 438 full-time operatives working in the pre-hospital emergency department of Mashhad city with at least 6 months of work experience in the operative field, who were included in the study by census method. Data were collected using a questionnaire (EMS-SAQ). The resulting data were collected through SPSS version 16 and descriptive statistics (prevalence, frequency percentage, mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent t, analysis of variance and Pearson correlation coefficient) were used for data analysis. A significance level of less than 0/05 was considered. Results: According to the results of the study, 13.75% of the studied people had a positive attitude towards patient safety. The level of attitude about patient safety and its areas in operational staff of pre-hospital emergency in Mashhad had an average of 53.55 ± 10.60. The most positive attitude was related to the field of understanding stress (34.2%) and the least positive attitude was related to the field of safety climate and management perception (5/7%). There was no statistically significant relationship between any of the individual characteristics with the general attitude about patient safety (P<0/05). Conclusion: Based on the findings of this research, the level of patient safety culture in the pre-hospital emergency of Mashhad has been assessed as negative, and this requires further research and also decision making such as holding briefing sessions for managers and employees, increasing staff, setting up an error reporting system and including relevant topics. It is for the safety of the patient in the classes while serving the staff to improve the current situation.