Measuring the Current Patient Safety Culture in the Gambian Public Hospitals

Background: Patient safety is crucial to the quality of patient care and remains a challenge for countries at all levels of development. There is popular acknowledgement of the importance of establishing patient safety culture in healthcare organizations. As a result, assessing patient safety culture in healthcare organizations has become a common activity to improve patient safety. The aim of this study was to examine the current patient safety culture from the perspective of healthcare workers in the Gambian public hospitals and to draw comparisons.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire which has 12 dimensions. Overall, we distributed 235 questionnaires and received 211 respondents. The data was collected between July and September 2011. SAS 9.2 version was used for the statistical analysis of the survey data that included descriptive as well as inferential statistics.
Results: The overall mean positive response rate for the Gambia was 52% which is 11% lower than the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) benchmark report of 63%. The results show that healthcare workers in the Gambia seem to have lower perceptions about patient safety culture. All 12 of the dimensions pertaining to patient safety culture were found to have a significant relationship with patient safety culture in the Gambia. Physicians are more likely to give a negative opinion and less likely to give a positive opinion about the factors of patient safety culture. The dimension with the highest positive mean score was “Teamwork within units” while the dimension with lowest positive mean score was “Frequency of event reporting”.
Conclusions: Healthcare workers appear to have a lower perception of patient safety culture compared to AHRQ 2012 benchmark report. Training of healthcare workers on patient safety and broad based research including all categories of healthcare organizations are highly recommended in order to improve patient safety culture.