Patient safety culture in the intensive care unit: cross-study

Patient safety culture has been the reason for great concern for the scientific community due to the high number of failures resulting from the provision of health care. The objective of this study was to evaluate the perception regarding the patient safety culture and their differences between categories, in the professional teams of the adult intensive care unit (ICU).

This is a cross-sectional descriptive study, with a quantitative approach, to evaluate the patient safety culture developed in the unit adult ICU of a public university hospital.

In this survey, 138 employees of the ICU participated, among them: physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, physiotherapists, nurses, nursing technicians, and secretaries. There was a predominance of nursing technicians (76.8%) and work experience time from 5 to ≥ 21 years (62.3%). The overall mean of the safety culture in the ICU was 57.80, and the domains with the best average were stress perception (73.84) and satisfaction at work (72.38) and with the worst mean was the perception of hospital management (42.69). The perception of safety attitudes in the professional category of physicians presented a general average of 61.63, being strengthened to job satisfaction (77,89) and with a higher perception in relation to nurses.

The overall ICU average for the patient safety culture was less than 75, which demonstrates a team with weakened safety attitude and, in addition, low perceptions of safety attitudes based on the results of management domains, working conditions and communication failures.