Selected aspects of "safety culture" in hospitals of the Czech Republic.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: Patient safety is a strategic goal of managers of all health care facilities in the Czech Republic. The development of a safety culture in the facility helps to ensure high quality health care. GOAL OF THE SURVEY was to assess the safety culture with regard to patient safety and team cooperation. A partial goal was to confirm the hypothesis that team cooperation among health care staff significantly influences patient safety.

METHODOLOGY: 772 nurses took part in a quantitative survey. The respondents were nurses working shifts in inpatient departments of hospitals in the Czech Republic.

RESULTS: Patient safety was described as excellent by 17.5% of nurses. It is described as very good by 60.2% of nurses and described as acceptable by 20.5% nurses. 78% of respondents agreed with the statement that patient safety was never neglected at the expense of increased workload. More than 10% of nurses reported that there were problems with patient safety. 19.8% of respondents were reported that efforts to prevent errors were not practiced at their clinic, and, therefore, and only chance had prevent more errors from occurring. According to 64.9% of respondents, the staff on the wards supported each other and a similar number of respondents reported that they showed respect for each other (60.2%). Respondents reported that intra-ward support increased the degree of patient safety.

CONCLUSION: Results from the survey show that team cooperation is a precondition for providing safe patient care, which cannot be underestimated and must be refined and improved through good hospital management.