Patient safety culture improvement tool: development and guidelines for use

The Patient Safety Culture Improvement Tool (PSCIT) was developed to assist healthcare organizations in identifying practical actions to improve their culture. This article describes the development process of the PSCIT and provides a guide to using the PSCIT. The tool is based on a safety culture maturity model, which describes five stages of cultural evolution, from pathological to generative. The PSCIT consists of nine elements that cover five patient safety culture dimensions, namely, leadership, risk analysis, workload management, sharing and learning and resource management. Each element describes the systems in place at each level of maturity, enabling organizations to identify their current level of maturity and actions to move to the next level. The PSCIT should be used with caution as there is currently a lack of reliability and validity data.