Interface between accreditation and patient safety: nursing team perspectives

To understand the relationship between accreditation and patient safety from the perspective of the nursing team.

A descriptive-exploratory study implementing a qualitative approach. It was developed with nursing workers from two Intensive Care Units in a hospital certified in excellence by Brazilian accreditation. The participants responded to individual semi-structured interviews guided by the question: "Tell me about the relationship between accreditation and patient safety in this hospital and unit". The corpus was transcribed in full, and the thematic content analysis technique was used.

There were 14 professionals interviewed. There are several specific improvements in patient safety mediated by accreditation between the two emerging categories. The workers reported that at times the advances in safe care are transversally visible to the certification/maintenance of accreditation visit, and at times they point to safety as something independent of the quality seal.

It was concluded that the investigated relationship was shown to be both dependent, as accreditation is a bridge for specific improvements, as well as independent, since patient safety goes beyond the certification process itself. In this context, criticality was revealed among nursing workers.