[Patient safety climate in medical centers of Kashan]

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

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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]

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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

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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