Abstract

Emphasizing on the patient safety improvement has led to extensive tendencies towards measuring safety culture and improving it in the medical centers. So, a research was conducted in Shahid Modarres Hospital to measure safety culture before and after education and to determine the affecting factors. A population of 236 employees was defined, including top managers, middle managers and personnel. They were given the standard patient safety attitude questionnaire (SAQ) before and after education which covered six dimensions, including: team work climate, safety climate, job satisfaction, stress recognition, perception of management, and work conditions. Its validity, internal and external reliability were tested and verified. A Likert scale and the McNemar, regression and path analysis tests were utilized. An improvement in the attitudes was seen regarding all dimensions (p<0.05). The regression between the demographic variables (job, job background in this hospital, work group, education, field of service, ward, age and gender) and various dimensions showed special characteristics in each dimension. According to path analysis, the levels of the dimensions’ influence on the total attitude before and after education were different. This difference encompassed both the amount of the effect of each dimension on the total attitude before and after the education and the rank of their effect on the total attitude before and after the education comparing each other. The results of the two phase safety culture assessment along with the amount and the rank of the effect of each dimension on the total attitude showed that regarding source limitations, we can concentrate education on the 6 dimension in the following order: safety climate, team work climate, perception of management, work conditions, job satisfaction, and stress recognition in order to achieve the optimal effectiveness.

Key words: Safety culture, factor analysis, education influence, patient safety.