Patient Safety Culture in 2 Public Hospitals in Vietnam: A Mixed Method Study

Abstract

Background: Patient safety culture is an important measure in assessing the quality of care. There is a growing need to establish a patient safety culture in hospitals. This study explored the perception of health professionals on patient safety culture in 2 public hospitals in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Method: A mixed-methods study with an online Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) and qualitative data collection was conducted in Hanoi. The HSOPSC was validated in Vietnam before using it.

Results: A total of 626 health professionals, including physicians and nurses, were involved in the survey, and 49 of them participated in in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The average positive response of patient safety culture composites was high at 85.2% and varied from 49.4% to 97.9%. The strongest areas were teamwork within units (91.3%) and organizational learning/continuous improvement (88.4%), and the areas that needed improvement were staffing (49.4%) and nonpunitive response to error (53.1%).

Conclusion: The centralized incident reporting, management with peer involvement on event reporting, and continuous quality improvement should be routinely embedded by hospital leaders down to unit managers and all staff.