Monday, 24 April 2017

Assessing Patient Safety Culture in an Emergency Department

                          http://mathewsopenaccess.com/EMedicine-current-issue.html



Safety of care is a public health priority. There are in France 2.6 serious adverse events (AEs) preventable 1,000 patientdays, between 120 and 190,000 preventable AEs during hospitalization each year [1]. In addition to the solutions adopted as new regulatory texts, development of standards and the assessment and training of professionals, safety culture of care allows a collective awareness to make the safety of care a priority. In other words, it allows each professional to always have in mind the question of the impact of its decisions and actions on the safety of care. Because emergency medicine is a risky activity, the culture of safety was estimated from the different actors of the Emergency Department (ED). There are several tools to measure safety culture of care. The French translation of the Hospital Survey On Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) [3] recommended by the french Haute Autorité de Santé [4] was used. This questionnaire has been validated in several other countries [5-10]. It allows to estimate the safety culture of care across ten dimensions. This has given us paths for action to improve the safety of care.

The direct assessment showed a Gaussian distribution quotes (Figure 1) with a mean value equal to 5.3 ± 2.1 on 10. HSOPSC explores the culture of safety in ten dimensions, each evaluated by 3-6 different issues. They are the overall perception of safety (50% positive response, confidence interval 95% (CI95: 40-60), frequency of reporting adverse events (60%, CI95: 50-69), relationships with supervisors (82%, CI95: 73- 88), learning organization and continuous improvement of service (feedback) (59%, CI95: 49-68), teamwork (86%, CI95: 78-91), freedom of expression (67%, CI95: 57-75), not repression of error (49%, CI95: 39-59), human resources (39%, CI95: 30-49), safety management (32%, CI95: 24-42) and teamwork between departments.

The response rate is very high, superior to those found in the literature. Safety culture of care is generally unsatisfactory with only half of positive responses on the general criterion. A recent international study, with response rates between 52% and 87% showed between 49% and 64% of positive responses on this criterion [6]. 63% [CI: 52-72%] of agents believe that the security level of care is “acceptable” and 20% [CI: 13-30%] “very good” (Figure 1). We found in the literature a rate of 62% acceptable in Dutch hospitals, 43% in Japan, 46% in Taiwan and 22% in hospitals Americans (45% of the respondents felt very good) [6, 8]. Dimensions “reporting errors or adverse events” and “feedback” are related with a positive response rate of respectively 60% and 59%. The dimension “freedom of expression” is penalized by the fact that agents do not feel free to question the decisions of their superiors. Other negative points are the dimensions beyond the perimeter of the ED (non-punitive response, human resources, safety management and teamwork between departments) with the lowest rate of positive responses, less than 50%. These low scores highlight a strategic deficit institution of safety culture of care, with a low level of bureaucratic maturity.

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