Patient Safety Culture Among Healthcare Provide RS in Ambulatory Healthcare Centers in a High-Income Arab Country

Abstract

Safety culture is one of the crucial cornerstones of healthcare quality and patient safety management worldwide. We conducted a patient safety culture survey in June 2016 among the healthcare providers in 38 ambulatory care centers in a high-income Arab country such as the United Arab Emirates particularly in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. Among the patient safety culture dimensions, the Nonpunitive Response to Error received the lowest rating (M=2.78) followed by Staffing (M=3.09) suggesting that these are priority areas for improvement. The organization had a high perception scores on Teamwork within Units (M=4.08), Organizational Learning—Continuous Improvement (M=3.98) and Management Support for Patient Safety (M=3.93) suggesting a strong potential towards improving the baseline of patient safety culture.

The study shows that there were statistically significant differences of patient safety culture according to professional experience, tenure in the center and in the type of profession in the Island Region, Middle Region and Eastern Region. There was statistically significant difference of patient safety culture according to the nature of patient contact in the Middle and Eastern Region ambulatory care centers. Also, patient safety grade and number of incidents reported showed significant difference according to region of ambulatory care centers.

The study suggests that there is punitive culture across all regional locations such that this may have resulted to low number of incident reporting or underreporting. However, there is a potential to improve the patient safety culture in the network of ambulatory care centers due to the high level of positive response in the teamwork within units, organizational learning and management supports as well as optimism shown in the patient safety grade ratings. This could be derived from the experiences of healthcare providers in international accreditation. These areas for improvement can be used to develop the structures and processes toward better patient safety outcomes.