Patient safety culture in Palestinian hospital pharmacies: a cross-sectional survey
Date
2017-08-01
Authors
Zaghari, Wafa’ J
Hamdan, Motasem
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Background Assessment of safety culture—safety-related norms and behaviours—in health care settings is receiving
increasing attention. Assessment of pharmacy safety culture in the occupied Palestinian territory is scarce. We aimed
to investigate patient safety culture in Palestinian hospital pharmacies and its association with hospital characteristics
(ie, ownership and number of beds) and pharmacy staff characteristics (including sex, age, education, job title,
working hours, and years in profession and working in a hospital).
Methods The self-administered safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) was translated into Arabic and was then
undertaken in February 2012 to April 2012. All pharmacy staff (n=115) working for more than 3 months before taking
the survey in 28 public, private, and non-governmental hospitals in the West Bank were targeted. We used IBM-SPSS
(version 19) for data analysis.
Findings 73 staff completed surveys (response rate 69%). Mean age of participants was 35·3 (SD 6·5) years and 48 (67%)
respondents were women. The mean scores for overall safety varied significantly between hospital pharmacies, ranging
from 43 (poor safety) to 85 (good safety) on a 0–100 scale (p=0·004). For SAQ domains (including teamwork atmosphere,
job satisfaction, safety climate, positive perception of management, stress recognition of respondents, and favourable
working conditions), mean scores ranged from 76 (SD 21) for favourable working conditions, to 62 (SD 25) for stress
recognition. Only two SAQ domains received 75% or more positive responses from participants, which were for job
satisfaction (56 respondents, 77%) and favourable working conditions (56 respondents, 77%). Overall safety score was
significantly associated with hospital ownership, with higher scores in private and non-governmental hospitals than in
public hospitals (p=0·002). Additionally, participants working in hospitals with less than 50 beds reported higher
positive perceptions of management than did their counterparts in hospitals with a greater number of beds (p=0·031).
No participant characteristic was significantly related to SAQ domain scores. 45 (62%) respondents did not report any
drug-related adverse event recorded by patients in the past year. 64 (87%) participants rated patient safety at their
hospital units as excellent or very good, and 9 (13%) rated patient safety as acceptable