ABSTRACT
Introduction: The issue of patient safety is today of much importance for the medical community and the World Health Organization in the developing and developed countries. Medical errors are serious threats to the public health and patient safety. The aim of this study was to determine nursing staff's viewpoints about patient safety climate in medical centers of Kashan
Methods and Materials: In this descriptive study 218 nurses working in the medical centers of Kashan were participated. Data were collected by questionnaire included two parts, demographic and 'Safety Climate Questionnaire Patient' with seven dimensions that covered by the questionnaire were: educational opportunities, reporting, refreshment, head nurses' viewpoints, nursing condition, relation with physician, and nurses' inter-relations. Content validity method and Cronbach's alpha coefficient [0.89] were used for confirming validity and reliability of the questionnaire, respectively. Data were evaluated using the SPSS [v.11]
Findings: The results showed that mean age of the nurses participated in the study was 32.63 +/- 6.85 years, of them 85.8% were female. The mean of patient safety climate score in all seven aspects were significantly different. Except for the refreshment aspect, other aspects had different mean scores in different centers [p=0.001]. Highest and lowest mean scores were related to the nurses' inter-relations [3.24 +/- 0.67] and head nurses' attitudes [2.47 +/- 0.71], respectively
Conclusion: Patient safety climate in the centers under the current study was not in a good condition. This does motivate the managers of the health sector in the city to adopt an appropriate approach to patient safety climate in health care centers
ABSTRACT
The main mission of any hospital in a health care system is to promote care quality for patients and to meet their needs and expectations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of hospital services from the viewpoint of patients admitted to Kashan educational hospitals. In this cross-sectional study, 390 patients admitted to Kashan educational hospitals were selected based on the stratified sampling and their points of view were evaluated using SERVQUAL questionnaire during 2008-9. The quality attributes of the questionnaire consisted of seven dimensions [e.g. physician's empathy, physician's availability, the reliability of physician performance, nurse's responsibility, nurse's empathy, drugs management and tangibility of services]. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were confirmed using content validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient [0.93], respectively. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. The mean age of the respondents was 45.72 +/- 18.36 years and 54.1% of subjects were men. There was a significant difference among the mean of seven dimension scores and the total quality dimension. Moreover, a significant difference was observed in the quality score mean of different dimensions among hospitals. The highest and lowest means of quality score were for physician's empathy [3.97 +/- 0.75] and tangibility of the services [3.76 +/- 0.58], respectively. From the patients' viewpoint, educational hospitals have made good progress in providing hospital services; however, different quality scores among quality dimensions in any hospital signify that the health care administrators should pay more attention on the quality improvement programs to improve patients' satisfaction