Patient safety culture in surgical centers: nursing perspectives

To analyze patient safety culture in the different spheres of management in the perspective of the nursing team providing services in surgical centers.

Cross-sectional study with 200 nursing professionals, in three surgical centers of Piauí state - one municipal, one federal, and one state - from January to August 2016 through the application of the instrument Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.

The first surgical center did not present a strengthened patient safety culture; the others presented the dimension "Organizational learning - continuous improvement" (80.6%/75.6%) and "Frequency of reported events" (76.2%) as strengthened areas. In the first, the safety score "average" was prevalent, whereas participants of the second and third judged patient safety as "very good". Most participants of the three surgical centers (80.0%) reported no adverse event in the previous 12 months.

The state and federal surgical centers obtained the best patient safety scores when compared to the municipal surgical center. Therefore, for a more effective and safe care, the strengthened dimensions in each type of management should be enhanced and the weakened ones should be improved.