Patient & employee safety culture: measurement & agreement.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Betancourt JA ; Delclos GL ; Douphrate DI ; Gimeno Ruiz de Porras D ; Pate WJ
• Description:
  The delivery of high-quality healthcare and the presence of a strong culture of patient safety are vital to the continued success of a healthcare organization. Failing to provide quality care can have a significant effect on an organization's financial bottom line. As a result, hospitals are focusing increased attention on improving healthcare quality by creating a culture of patient safety. The effect of poor employee safety performance in healthcare may not be as dramatic as large-scale industrial disasters but has the potential to drastically impact employee health and well-being. Increased incidence and severity of workplace injuries can also create negative impacts on patient safety. Despite efforts to improve patient safety culture (PSC) in U.S. hospitals, employee safety, part of the field of occupational health, often appears to be considered an afterthought. For example, as part of its accreditation survey process, The Joint Commission (2020) requires that results of an organization's most recent safety culture survey be provided. Such survey results, as demonstrated by references to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Culture of Safety survey, are often focused on patient safety and lack measures related to employee safety (The Joint Commission, 2018). Safety culture, both employee safety culture (ESC) and PSC, can be considered a part of the overall organizational culture, but with emphasis on beliefs and values that impact employee safety and health, and patient safety, respectively (Clarke, 1999). OSHA (2020) and The Joint Commission (2012) have both released publications indicating a linkage between PSC and ESC. Despite this presumed linkage, the literature is lacking in studies concurrently measuring and evaluating the level of PSC and ESC in a healthcare organization to identify the level of agreement between the two. Researchers in the field agree that additional studies are needed to show that patient safety and employee safety are interrelated (Sokas, Braun, Chenven, et al., 2013). Inadequate evidence exists to determine whether strong PSC correlates well to strong ESC or whether tools designed to measure PSC agree well with tools designed to measure ESC. PSC surveys, such as those tools developed by AHRQ, are frequently administered to healthcare workers to measure and assess the strength of PSC in the organization. In contrast, ESC surveys are administered less frequently, possibly due to the difficulty of identifying validated survey tools or due to the desire to not overwhelm employees with too many surveys. If the presumed relationship between PSC and ESC exists, then practicing safety professionals could gain valuable information on ESC without administering a separate survey tool. The authors hypothesized that PSC and ESC measure related organizational characteristics and that a high level of agreement exists between PSC and ESC. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Occupational Health Quality Control Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Health care; Work organization; Patient handling; Quality standards; Work environment; Safety culture; Costs
• ISSN:
  0099-0027
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 6 ; Texas
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  41-46
• Volume:
  65
• Issue:
  2
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20065093
• Citation:
  Prof Saf 2020 Feb; 65(2):41-46
• Contact Point Address:
  William John Pate, PhD, Program Director, Occupational and Radiation Safety, University of Texas Medical Branch, Health Science Center Houston, TX
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2020
• Performing Organization:
  University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Professional Safety
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:45e91e2a633beed60ac6f3a50312c135e958bba8605bd2f69cc776e8ceacdcd5ffd71b479808f56f97390362274a68915aa9a0df3ee5075cb68bf8b3f8c122ed
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/249328/cdc_249328_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.17 MB ]