Staff perceptions of patient safety in the NHS ambulance services: an exploratory qualitative study

Most research investigating staff perceptions of patient safety has been based in primary care or hospitals, with little research on emergency services. Therefore, this study aimed to explore staff perceptions of patient safety in the NHS ambulance services.

A stratified qualitative study using semi-structured interviews.

Three urban or rural ambulance service NHS trusts in England.

A total of 44 participants from three organisational levels, including executives, managers and operational staff.

The semi-structured interviews explored the interpretation and definition of patient safety, perceived risks, incident reporting, communication and organisational culture. The framework method of qualitative data analysis was used to analyse the interviews and NVivo software was used to manage and organise the data.

We identified five dominant themes: varied interpretation of patient safety; significant patient safety risks; reporting culture shift; communication; and organisational culture. The findings demonstrated that staff perceptions of patient safety ranged widely across the three organisational levels, while they remained consistent within those levels across the participating ambulance service NHS trusts in England.

The findings suggest that participants from all organisational levels perceive that the NHS ambulance services have become much safer for patients over recent years, which signifies an awareness of the historical issues and how they have been addressed. The inclusion of three distinct ambulance service NHS trusts and organisational levels provides deepened insight into the perceptions of patient safety by staff. As the responses of participants were consistent across the three NHS trusts, the identified issues may be generic and have application in other ambulance and emergency service settings, with implications for health policy on a national basis.