A National Study of Patient Safety Culture in Hospitals in Sweden.

OBJECTIVE: Using the Hospital Survey on Patient Culture, our aim was to investigate the patient safety culture in all Swedish hospitals and to compare the culture among managers, physicians, registered nurses, and enrolled nurses and to identify factors associated with high overall patient safety. METHODS: The study used a correlational design based on cross-sectional surveys from health care practitioners in Swedish health care (N = 23,781). We analyzed the associations between overall patient safety (outcome variable) and 12 culture dimensions and 5 background characteristics (explanatory variables). Simple logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine the bivariate association between each explanatory variable and the outcome variable. The explanatory variables were entered to determine the multivariate associations between the variables and the outcome variable. RESULTS: The highest rated culture dimensions were "teamwork within units" and "nonpunitive response to error," and the lowest rated dimensions were "management support for patient safety" and "staffing." The multivariate analysis showed that long professional experience (>15 years) was associated with increased probability for high overall patient safety. Compared with general wards, the probability for high overall patient safety was higher for emergency care but lower for psychiatric care. The probability for high overall patient safety was higher for both enrolled nurses and physicians compared with managers. CONCLUSIONS: The safety culture dimensions of the Hospital Survey on Patient Culture contributed far more to overall patient safety than the background characteristics, suggesting that these dimensions are very important in efforts to improve the overall patient safety culture.

The professional culture among physicians in Sweden: potential implications for patient safety.

BACKGROUND: Patient safety culture, i.e. a subset of an organization's culture, has become an important focus of patient safety research. An organization's culture consists of many cultures, underscoring the importance of studying subcultures. Professional subcultures in health care are potentially important from a patient safety point of view. Physicians have an important role to play in the effort to improve patient safety. The aim was to explore physicians' shared values and norms of potential relevance for patient safety in Swedish health care. METHODS: Data were collected through group and individual interviews with 28 physicians in 16 semi-structured interviews, which were recorded and transcribed verbatim before being analysed with an inductive approach. RESULTS: Two overarching themes, "the competent physician" and "the integrated yet independent physician", emerged from the interview data. The former theme consists of the categories Infallible and Responsible, while the latter theme consists of the categories Autonomous and Team player. The two themes and four categories express physicians' values and norms that create expectations for the physicians' behaviours that might have relevance for patient safety. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians represent a distinct professional subculture in Swedish health care. Several aspects of physicians' professional culture may have relevance for patient safety. Expectations of being infallible reduce their willingness to talk about errors they make, thus limiting opportunities for learning from errors. The autonomy of physicians is associated with expectations to act independently, and they use their decisional latitude to determine the extent to which they engage in patient safety. The physicians perceived that organizational barriers make it difficult to live up to expectations to assume responsibility for patient safety. Similarly, expectations to be part of multi-professional teams were deemed difficult to fulfil. It is important to recognize the implications of a multi-faceted perspective on the culture of health care organizations, including physicians' professional culture, in efforts to improve patient safety.

Patient safety subcultures among registered nurses and nurse assistants in Swedish hospital care: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Patient safety culture emerges from the shared assumptions, values and norms of members of a health care organization, unit, team or other group with regard to practices that directly or indirectly influence patient safety. It has been argued that organizational culture is an amalgamation of many cultures, and that subcultures should be studied to develop a deeper understanding of an organization's culture. The aim of this study was to explore subcultures among registered nurses and nurse assistants in Sweden in terms of their assumptions, values and norms with regard to practices associated with patient safety. METHODS: The study employed an exploratory design using a qualitative method, and was conducted at two hospitals in southeast Sweden. Seven focus group interviews and two individual interviews were conducted with registered nurses and seven focus group interviews and one individual interview were conducted with nurse assistants. Manifest content analysis was used for the analysis. RESULTS: Seven patient safety culture domains (i.e. categories of assumptions, values and norms) that included practices associated with patient safety were found: responsibility, competence, cooperation, communication, work environment, management and routines. The domains corresponded with three system levels: individual, interpersonal and organizational levels. The seven domains consisted of 16 subcategories that expressed different aspects of the registered nurses and assistants nurses' patient safety culture. Half of these subcategories were shared. CONCLUSIONS: Registered nurses and nurse assistants in Sweden differ considerably with regard to patient safety subcultures. The results imply that, in order to improve patient safety culture, efforts must be tailored to both registered nurses' and nurse assistants' patient safety-related assumptions, values and norms. Such efforts must also take into account different system levels. The results of the present study could be useful to facilitate discussions about patient safety within and between different professional groups.