Assessment of the safety culture of the Clinical Center of Sechenov University

Formation of safety culture is a basic requirement of international standards and Roszdravnadzor’s Proposals (Practical Recommendations) for quality and safety of medical activities in Russian Federation. A developed safety culture influences the reduction of undesirable events in medical organization.

 Aim. To assess the level of safety culture of the Clinical Center of Sechenov University with the subsequent development of a strategy for its improvement.

 Materials and methods. The study was conducted using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety questionnaire adapted by the authors according to the methodology of the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality. A total of 1049 medical workers of the Clinical Center of Sechenov University participated in the survey. Statistics To assess the reliability and consistency of the obtained results, the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was calculated in IBM SPSS program, statistical analysis was performed, and comparative analysis with international databases was carried out.

Results. Middle medical personnel 45.2 % (n = 474), physicians 40.6 % (n = 426), junior medical personnel 11.7 % (n = 123), residents 2.5 % (n = 26) participated in the survey. Representatives of the most high-risk specialties participated more actively: anesthesiology and resuscitation 12.3 % (n = 129), surgery 9.6 % (n = 101), cardiology 8.3 % (n = 87). The strongest component of safety culture was teamwork within departments 83.1 % (n = 872). Nine components were found to be neutral. Two components were the weakest requiring improvement: staffing 44,5 % (n = 467) and non-punitive response to adverse events 47.1 % (n = 495). The overall safety culture level of the Clinical Center was 64 %. Comparative analysis with foreign data showed that the level of safety culture of the Clinical Center is higher than the average of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and Saudi Arabia (52 %), and is on par with the indicators of medical organizations in the United States of America (65 %). The strategy for improving the safety culture of the Clinical Center has been to develop a culture of reporting: anonymous collection of reports of adverse events electronically, role-playing training of employees in a game format on how to report and deal with adverse events, and launching a competition, “Sechenovtsy for Safety. Incidents”.

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