[THE ADMINISTRATIVE TEAMS CONTRIBUTION TO PATIENT SAFETY IN AN ISRAELI PRIVATE HOSPITAL NETWORK]

Assessing the attitudes and perception of risk management among medical secretaries and their effect on patients' safety in actual patient care, in a semi-private medical network and in a public hospital, to evaluate changes in these attitudes over time.

A hospital is a complex, complicated and a high-risk environment in which, along with other procedures, administrative processes, which are usually performed by the medical secretarial staff, may also have an impact on clinical activities and are prone to errors as well as other hospital activities.

A retrospective cohort study was conducted. The survey was based on questionnaires completed once a year (during the period 2015-2018) by medical secretaries from seven different medical centers. Over these three years, different instructional and guidance interventions dealing with patients' safety were performed. Changes in attitudes and perceptions towards risk management and patients' safety were collected by comparison of answers at the beginning (2015) and the end (2018) of the study period. A group of medical secretaries of a new public hospital served as a control group. They completed the initial questionnaire and were not exposed to any instructional interventions. Follow-up time was 33 months.

A total of 225 participants were recruited at the beginning of the study and 277 were in the study group at the end and 40 were in the control group. A significant and positive correlation was found between the perception and attitude towards patients' safety of the medical secretaries in the study group. Safety perception of the research group was significantly higher in comparison to the control group.

Instructional interventions do have an impact and increase the level of safety perception of the medical secretaries regarding patients' safety.

Ongoing safety interventions have led to an increased level of safety perception among medical secretaries. The results demonstrated the importance and benefit of the interventions in raising the safety level of hospital care.