Summary
Improving patient safety culture (PSC) is a significant priority for OECD countries as they work to improve healthcare quality and safety—a goal that has increased in importance as countries have faced new safety concerns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from this OECD benchmarking work in PSC show that there is significant room for improvement.
Content
Key findings
- Improving patient safety culture (PSC) is a significant priority for OECD countries as they work to improve healthcare quality and safety—a goal that has increased in importance as countries have faced new safety concerns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Findings from benchmarking work in PSC show that there is significant room for improvement. Across included survey findings from OECD countries, only 46% of surveyed health workers believe that important patient care information is transferred across hospital units and during shift changes.
- Just two-in-five surveyed health workers in OECD countries believe the staffing levels at their workplace are appropriate for ensuring patient safety (40%) or that mistakes and event reports would not held against them (41%).
- Only one-in-two health care workers believe that their hospital management provides a work climate that promotes patient safety and shows that patient safety is a top priority (50%) or that staff there is freely speak to colleagues and authority about patient safety issues in their work setting (52%).
- On average, across included surveys from OECD countries, staff report relatively higher levels of teamwork within their unit or ward (68%) and that their organization exhibits continuous improvement (65%)—i.e. that hospital staff have learned from past negative events and that changes have been evaluated for effectiveness.
- This benchmarking work reveals heterogeneity in how health workers perceive patient safety in their work environments. For example, the differences between staff positive perceptions of safety in regard to management support for patient safety and communications openness differed by over 50 percentage points between the highest and lowest preforming country measurements.
- International benchmarking is a feasible and useful addition to exiting measurement initiatives on safety culture and helps to accelerate the necessary change. Collaborative efforts are not only useful for refining and improving comparability of PSC indicators, but they can also help move the needle on performance through sharing best-practices internationally. Future findings in PSC may be influenced by the profound impact of COVID-19 has had on patient and health worker safety.
- There is an opportunity for countries to capitalize on the linkages of PSC with other key metrics, such as safety climate, health worker safety, health worker resilience, and patient-reported experiences of safety.
Developing international benchmarks of patient safety culture in hospital care: Findings of the OECD patient safety culture pilot data collection and considerations for future work (19 January 2022)
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/95ae65a3-en.pdf?expires=1642755621&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=08DFF5EB3B6788BEA7C4EDF97B3E7876
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