Evaluation of Patient Safety Culture of Nurses in Northern Cyprus

Abstract

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Patient safety culture is the outcome of values, perceptions, attitudes, skills and behaviors of an individual or group that determine the style, competence and promises of an institution in health and safety management. Nurses play an important role in improving quality in health care through initiatives and strategies for patient safety. This study was conducted to evaluate patient safety culture in nurses working in a university hospital in Northern Cyprus.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This survey was planned as a cross-sectional descriptive study and 130 nurses were included in the sampling. The survey data were collected using the Personal Information Form and the Patient Safety Culture Scale (PSCS).RESULTS: In this study, the total mean score of the nurses from the PSCS was 2.82 +/- 0.44. The mean scores of the nurses' subscales related to PSCS were determined as follows: 2.88 +/- 0.54 in the "care environment", 2.83 +/- 0.56 in the "employee behavior", 2.83 +/- 0.59 in the "employee training", 2.81 +/- 0.50 in the "management and leadership", and 2.68 +/- 0.54 in the "unexpected incident and error reporting" subscales. The total Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.963 and between 0.807-0.963 for the subscales.CONCLUSION: It was determined that the nurses' PSCS scores were above the average level. Developing a patient safety culture in institutions is important for quality improvements which are rapidly advancing in healthcare services nowadays.