The impact of nursing practice environments on patient safety culture in primary health care: a scoping review protocol

Abstract

Background: Patient safety is a key priority for healthcare organisations. It impacts directly on patient health and wellbeing. The increasing complexity of current healthcare settings, which are associated with high work demands and increasingly stressful professional practice environments, contributes to an increased likelihood of errors and adverse events. Primary health care, given its comprehensiveness of care, makes up a large proportion of the care delivered to the population.

Aim: To map the knowledge about the impact that nursing practice environments have on safety culture in the primary healthcare setting. This knowledge is essential for a more effective and appropriate understanding of this phenomenon and to enable the definition of strategies that can promote the provision of safer care to the population.

Design & setting: A scoping review will be conducted based on the method proposed by the JBI, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) will be used.

Method: Study selection, data extraction, and synthesis will be performed by two independent reviewers. Based on the Population (or participants), Concept, and Context (PCC) framework, this scoping review will consider studies that address nurses' practice environment and patient safety culture in primary health care. The review will consider all studies, published or unpublished, from 2002 to the present.

Conclusion: The results from this scoping review are expected to provide an overview of the importance of the nursing practice environments on patient safety culture, which will be crucial to define an appropriate range of strategies to promote the delivery of the safest health care to the population.

Keywords: environment; general practice; nursing; patient safety; primary health care.