Patient safety culture in primary and home care services

Abstract

Background: Safety culture is still a poorly studied subject in primary care and home care, although these settings are considered gateways to access to healthcare. This study aims to evaluate safety culture in primary and home care settings.

Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was carried out with 147 professionals from nine districts covered by one home care program and six primary healthcare centres. The Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) was used to evaluate the safety culture, in which scores ≥75 are indicative of a positive safety culture.

Results: A total of 56 (86,1%) questionnaires returned from the home care professionals and 91 (86,6%) from the primary care professionals. The Job satisfaction domain was the best evaluated, achieving a score of 88.8 in home care and 75.1 in primary care. The achievement of high scores on Safety Climate, Job Satisfaction, Teamwork Climate, and Total SAQ was related to male gender, and time of professional experience of three to 4 years. Perception of management and Working conditions had the lowest scores, and this result was related with long time of experience.

Conclusions: It is concluded that professionals working in home care gave higher scores for safety culture in their workplace than the primary care workers.

Keywords: Home care services; Patient safety culture; Primary care.