An analysis on the relationship between safety awareness and safety behaviors of healthcare professionals, Ankara/Turkey

OBJECTIVES: This descriptive study aims to examine the relationship between the safety awareness of healthcare professional and their safety behaviors. METHODS: The study was carried out on 418 healthcare professionals working in a training and research hospital in Ankara/Turkey. The survey method was used as data collection tool. The questionnaire consisted of 3 sections and 18 questions. First section consisted of questions on sociodemographic characteristics and, second section consisted of the awareness scale and third section consisted of safety behaviors scale. RESULTS: The safety awareness and safety behaviors are scored on a scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). The safety awareness and safety behaviors has an average score of 3.85 ± 0.81 and 3.56 ± 0.82, respectively. The safety awareness and safety behavior levels of healthcare professionals were found to be high. CONCLUSION: A significant positive correlation was found between safety awareness and safety behaviors and it was concluded that the increase in safety awareness led to an increase in safety behavior.