The culture of patient safety in an Iranian intensive care unit

To explore nurses' and physicians' attitudes and perceptions relevant to safety culture and to elicit strategies to promote safety culture in an intensive care unit.

A strong safety culture is essential to ensure patient safety in the intensive care unit.

This case study adopted a mixed method design. The Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ-ICU version), assessing the safety climate through six domains, was completed by nurses and physicians (n = 42) in an academic intensive care unit. Twenty semi-structured interviews and document analyses were conducted as well. Interviews were analysed using a framework analysis method.

Mean scores across the six domains ranged from 52.3 to 72.4 on a 100-point scale. Further analysis indicated that there were statistically significant differences between physicians' and nurses' attitudes toward teamwork (mean scores: 64.5/100 vs. 52.6/100, d = 1.15, t = 3.69, P < 0.001) and job satisfaction (mean scores: 78.2/100 vs. 57.7/100, d = 1.5, t = 4.8, P < 0.001). Interviews revealed several safety challenges including underreporting, failure to learn from errors, lack of speaking up, low job satisfaction among nurses and ineffective nurse-physician communication.

The results indicate that all the domains need improvements. However, further attention should be devoted to error reporting and analysis, communication and teamwork among professional groups, and nurses' job satisfaction.

Nurse managers can contribute to promoting a safety culture by encouraging staff to report errors, fostering learning from errors and addressing inter-professional communication problems.