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Abstract Background: Patient safety remains an area of global concern and patient safety culture among healthcare staff is one of its most important determinants. Saudi Arabia is investing big efforts in enhancement of patient safety. Assessment of patient safety culture is enlightening about the impact of such efforts and invaluable in informing their future directions. Methods: This cross-sectional study aimed at assessing the patient safety culture in King Abdullah Medical City (KAMC), a tertiary referral center in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) version 2.0 distributed electronically to all staff of KAMC. The HSOPSC Hospital Survey 2.0 Data Entry and Analysis Tool was used to compare KAMC results to those obtained from global data. Additional analyses were performed on SPSS to explore for association of responses with participant characteristics. Results: A total of 350 participants completed the questionnaire, 58.6% of whom were nurses. The comparison of the composite measure of all 10 domains of the HSOPSC showed 62% positive responses at KAMC versus 70% in the global database. This difference was statistically significant with a chi square of 10.64 and a p value of 0.001. Percentages of positive responses from KAMC data exceeded those from global data in domains of “Organizational learning and continuous improvement” and “Communication about error”, (p = 0.002 and 0.003, respectively). Conclusion: Although safety culture seems to score lower at KAMC than globally, promises for accelerated improvement in the future might be expected based on improvement trends in the literature.
Algethami et al. (Fri,) studied this question.