Measuring safety culture in Palestinian neonatal intensive care units using the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire

This study aimed to measure safety culture, examine variations among neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), and assess the associations with caregiver characteristics.

A cross-sectional design was used, utilizing the Arabic version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire, administered to all 305 nurses and physicians working in the 16 NICUs in the West Bank.

There were 204 participants, comprising of mainly nurses (80.4%), women (63%), 30 years or younger (62.6%), holding a bachelor's degree or more (66.7%), and with at least 5 years of experience in the profession (60.3%). Safety Attitudes Questionnaire mean domain scores ranged from 71.22 for job satisfaction to 63 for stress recognition on a 100-point scale; the scores varied significantly among NICUs (P<.05). About 85% of the participants rated the safety grade either excellent or very good; 71.0% did not report any event in the past year.

We found large variations in safety culture within and between a comprehensive sample of Palestinian NICUs. The findings suggest the need for a customized approach that builds on existing strengths and targets areas of opportunities for improvement to optimize health care delivery to the most vulnerable of patients, sick newborns in the NICU setting.