Patient Safety: Examining Safety Culture in Medical Care - Essay Sample

Introduction

According to Vasconcelos, Arruda, Freire & Carvalho (2018), patient safety is a significant part in ensuring quality assurance in medical care. Safety culture in determining patients' safety has developed since it elaborates the leaders and employees attitudes, awareness, interactions, practices, and routines which are carried out in an organization. Safety culture tends to differ across various levels and organizations of medical care. Different tools are established to measure the attitudes of medical care providers in organizations. Due to the reduced safety climates in most medical care organizations, the articles opted to determine the safety measurement tools in medical facilities, thus leading to patients' safety.

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Significance of the Problem

The safety and quality of medical care services are among the key considerations in providing care for patients. Quality and Cost of Primary Care (QUALICOPC) has helped in investigating patients' safety in medical organizations (Vasconcelos et al., 2018). Also, these platforms help in assessing the accessibility of healthcare services among patients. Since the primary medical care centers are not measured and the SAQ is not validated in Slovenian language, this article aimed at testing the validity and reliability of the Slovenian language of SAQ. Also, it focused on determining the factor structure of Slovenia language of SAQ in the medical care setting.

Purpose of the Paper

The paper will determine the reliability and validity of information used in the articles that is the validity and reliability of the Slovenian language of SAQ. Also, it will determine the factor structures of Slovenia language of SAQ in the medical care setting.

1 Vasconcelos, P., Arruda, L., Freire, V. S., & Carvalho, R. (2018). Instruments for evaluation of safety culture in primary health care: Integrative review of the literature. Public Health, 156, 147-151. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2017.12.024

To test the and reliabiliity and validity ability of the Slovenian language of SAQ

To determine the factor structure of Slovenia language of SAQ in the medical care setting.

Independent variable: Demographic characteristics of the sample selected as participants

Dependent variable: Factor structure of validity and reliability

Qualitative Method

The number of participants chosen was 211. These participants had various leadership roles in the organization. The participants included physicians, dentists, administrative staff, nurse assistants, and registered nurses.

The study used an electronic survey method where links about the survey were sent to the participants through their email addresses. The technique used was confidential since the emails of participants were kept private.

Various factors were revealed since they fitted in the original factor model. Some of the elements included the safety climate, stress recognition, teamwork climate, working conditions and satisfactions .the model used in the study revealed that the condition and satisfaction factor and communication factor set a combination of two factors from SAQ-short-form scale. Some of the items in the study had adverse outcomes since they had negative correlations to the construct. In the study, communication was developed as a safety measure within the safety culture. The differences which emerge in safety culture between various stages of medical care need different tools for the measurements developed in for promoting medical safety.

Further Research

Since there were no best tools recognized for safety measurements in hospitals, further research can focus on conducting validations and adaptations of the existing tools that can be utilized in medical centers. Also, a particular emphasis can be developed on the validity and reliability criterion. Researchers can design a different scale that might be used on the theoretical models of promoting safety culture at the medical care levels.

The study had various limitations as it used a limited number of participants who could not represent the whole population. The study has limitations to workers who had acquired different leadership roles, which led to controls in the validity of the results. Also, although the response rate among the selected employees was high, there was no information which represented the non-respondents, hence leading to bias (Vasconcelos et al., 2018). The use of SAQ as a primary medical care tool had various limitations, as there are other best tools to be used in this study.

Conclusion

The Slovenian language versions, which consisted of six factors, was a valid tool for measuring validity and reliability among the safety culture in medical care workers. The study used 211 participants who did not represent the whole population as it focused on those with different leadership roles. The responses provided by every participant were confidential, thus maintaining privacy. Researchers used the qualitative methods of data collection, which helped in achieving the goals and objectives set before starting the study. After acquiring many results from the survey, it was realized that the study had a bias since it did not represent the whole population. Therefore, furthers studies can explore the confidential culture of primary medical care organizations. Also, these studies can utilize other tools which can help in recognizing other essential factors.

Reference

Vasconcelos, P., Arruda, L., Freire, V. S., & Carvalho, R. (2018). Instruments for evaluation of safety culture in primary health care: Integrative review of the literature. Public Health, 156, 147-151. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2017.12.024