Awareness and implementation of nine World Health Organization’s patient safety solutions among three groups of healthcare workers in Oman

BACKGROUND: The pressing need to reduce burgeoning poor safety measures affecting millions worldwide has alerted World Health Assembly to set-up mechanisms to increase patient safety. In response to such needs, World Health Organization (WHO) formulated nine life-saving patient safety solutions that would be essential to lower reduce healthcare-related harm. There is a paucity of research examining awareness of such nine patient safety solutions. This study has been designed and conducted to compare self-estimated awareness and practice of the World Health Organization’s nine “Life-saving Patient Safety Solutions” aide memoirs among different groups of healthcare workers in Oman. METHODS: All nationwide healthcare workers (nurses, physicians and allied health professionals) in hospitals and primary healthcare under the auspice of Ministry of Health were the target population of this survey. Participants were selected by a simple, systematic random sampling from the list of staff in each representative institution. The study was conducted from November 2012 to February 2013. A total of 800 participants (590 from health centers and 210 from hospitals) were invited to participate in this study. RESULTS: A total number of 763 healthcare professionals consented to participate. The overall response rate was 95 % with the majority being nurses, female staff and who had an average of more than 4 years of experience. Overall, 85 % of the participants self-estimated awareness of the nine life-saving patient safety solutions showed the nurses being the most aware, followed by physicians with the allied health professionals showing suboptimal awareness. The primary healthcare center staff demonstrated higher awareness compared to hospital staff. There was a complex relationship between health professional’s age, place of work and awareness and practice. CONCLUSION: This study lays the foundation for international comparisons of self-estimated awareness and practice towards nine patient safety solutions. The data from Oman indicates the need for more attention to be directed towards heightening awareness and practice of the nine patient safety solutions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1771-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.