Patient safety culture in teaching hospitals in Iran: assessment by the hospital survey on patient safety culture (HSOPSC)

Introduction: Patient safety culture is an important part of improvement in the safety of health care. Knowing its present status is required for development of safety culture. The present study aimed to evaluate the current status of Patient safety culture in hospitals of three central provinces of Iran. Method: The present cross-sectional study was performed in teaching hospitals of Tehran, Alborz, and Qazvin provinces. The standard HSOPSC questionnaire was used for evaluation of the patient safety culture from the viewpoint of 522(Qazvin: 200, Tehran: 312, Alborz: 40) individuals who were randomly selected as workers of the hospitals. The collected data were analyzed using Chi-square and ANOVA tests. Results:The mean positive response to 12 aspects of the patient safety was 62.9%. “Organizational learning” had the highest proportion of positive response (71.18%) and “Handoffs & Transitions” had the lowest (54.49%). There was a statistically significant difference in scores of “Teamwork within Units”(p=0.006(,”Manager Expectations & actions promoting”(p=0.014),”organizational learning and continuous improvement”(p=0.001), “Management support”(p=0.007), “Feedback and communication”(p=0.012), and “Communication openness”(p=0.003) among the provinces, respectively. Conclusion: We performed a full assessment of the patient safety culture in the studied provinces. Organizational learning was satisfactory in the hospitals. The studied hospitals need arrangement of safety-based programs and supports of senior administrators to perform more sophisticated efforts and improve the patient safety culture.