Assessing patient safety culture in Tunisian operating rooms: A multicenter study

Objective: To assess the patient safety culture (PSC) in operating rooms (ORs) and to determine influencing factors.

Design: A cross-sectional descriptive multicenter study which was conducted over a period of 7 months (October 2014-April 2015) using the French validated version of the Hospital Survey On Patient Safety Culture questionnaire.

Setting: Of the note, 15 ORs of public and private healthcare institutions.

Participants: In total, there were 368 participants including surgeons, anesthesiologists, surgical and anesthesia technicians, nurses and caregivers, divided into 316 professionals exercising in public sector and 52 working in private one.

Main outcome measure(s): A self-administrated questionnaire investigating 10 dimensions of PSC (including 45 items), two items examining the staff perception of patient safety quality and reporting events, and five items regarding demographic characteristics of respondents.

Results: The participation rate in the study was 70.8%. All 10 dimensions were to be improved. The overall perception of patient safety had a score of 34.9%. The dimension that had the lowest score (20.5%) was the non-punitive response to error, and the one that had the highest score (41.67%) was teamwork in the ORs. Three dimensions were developed in private sector, and none in public hospitals.

Conclusion: This study showed that the level of the PSC needs to be improved not only in public hospitals but also in private ones. The obtained results highlight the importance of implementing quality management systems and developing PSC.