ABSTRACT
@#BACKGROUND Patient safety has become a matter of interest to healthcare professionals, governments and researchers worldwide. During the last decade, many studies have been conducted to assess the prevalence, severity and causes of a large variety of different types of adverse events in hospitals, as well as the effectiveness of various approaches to enhance safety. In Mongolia, it is also an arguable point, mistakes and errors associated with physicians, hospital staffs and healthcare organizations has been occurring frequently in recent years. Our main aim is to find difference between physicians and nurses’ attitude on patient safety culture. METHODS The study included 3 tertiary hospitals from Ulaanbaatar city, Mongolia with a total of 122 respondents; all hospital staff. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) Questionnaire from AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) was used. AHRQ methods, Pearson’s Chi-squared test, pairwise proportion test (p≤ 0,05) were used for statistical analysis. RESULTS Patient safety in hospitals was evaluated as positive by 62.3% of healthcare workers. The highest scores were obtained in specific dimensions as teamwork within unit (77.3%), unit’s team learning from occurred adverse events (71%). Per our survey, health care workers considered non-punitive response to error (20.6%) and communication openness (27.7%) as being weak areas. In surveyed hospitals, physicians and nurses had a significantly different outlook at communication, adverse events reporting and management support. Physicians reported fewer errors than nurses. CONCLUSION Doctors rated safety culture less positively than nurses in some dimensions of patient safety culture- feedback and communication about error, transition and handoffs, management support for patient safety and teamwork across units. This result could indicate a need for more intensive interventions in certain areas of patient safety culture and is certainly an area for future research inquiry.