Patient Safety Attitudes among Doctors and Nurses: Associations with Workload, Adverse Events, Experience

TLDR

Patient safety has gained attention from healthcare organizations and requires improvement in hospitals through education, management support, and regulations. The study investigates doctors’ and nurses’ safety attitudes and how workload, adverse events, and experience influence them, aiming to guide policymakers in enhancing decision‑making to improve patient safety. A descriptive cross‑sectional survey of 73 doctors and 246 nurses in two private hospitals in Northern Cyprus used the Turkish Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. Participants reported negative overall safety attitudes, with work‑conditions rated most positively and safety climate least; nurses scored higher than doctors on job satisfaction, stress recognition, and management, and significant differences were found across experience, workload, and adverse‑event levels.

Abstract

Patient safety concept has achieved more attention from healthcare organizations to improve the safety culture. This study aimed to investigate patient safety attitudes among doctors and nurses and explore associations between workload, adverse events, and experience with patient safety attitudes. The study used a descriptive cross-sectional design and the Turkish version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. Participants included 73 doctors and 246 nurses working in two private hospitals in Northern Cyprus. The participants had negative perceptions in all patient safety domains. The work conditions domain received the highest positive perception rate, and the safety climate domain received the lowest perception rate among the participants. Nurses showed a higher positive perception than doctors regarding job satisfaction, stress recognition, and perceptions of management domains. There were statistically significant differences between experiences, workloads, adverse events, and total mean scores of patient safety attitudes. Policymakers and directors can improve the quality of care of patients and patient safety by boosting the decision-making of health care providers on several domains of safety attitudes. Patient safety needs to be improved in hospitals through in-service education, management support, and institutional regulations.