Assessment of Attitude of Primary Care Medical Staff Toward Patient Safety Culture in Primary Health-care Centers–—Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia

INTRODUCTION: An effective leadership is critical to the development of a safety culture within an organization. Patient safety in primary health care is an emerging field of research of increasing importance. OBJECTIVE: This study has been conducted to explore the safety culture attitude toward patient safety to improve the quality and patient safety in primary health-care centers. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey involving 288 medical staff in primary health-care centers in Al-Ahsa was conducted using an Arabic translated safety attitude questionnaire to assess the safety attitudes among health care center staff toward patient safety culture. RESULTS: This study showed that the attitude of medical staff in primary health-care centers is somewhat positive toward patient safety culture where the average of job satisfaction score in the current study was higher at 80% and the overall score for safety climate was 68%. The overall score for safety attitudes was highest in Al-Ayoun Health Center (79%) and lowest in Al Faisaliah Health Center (58%). The score of teamwork and stress recognition was high and statistically significant (p<0.05) among females. However, staff perception toward management was significantly higher (p<0.05) among males. Staff perception toward management was significantly low (p<0.05) among clinicians. The overall score for safety attitudes was remarkably high (p<0.05) among those with less than 10 years' experience, the overall safety culture score was significantly high (p<0.05) among administrative staff and all correlations were significant (p<0.01) except for recognition of stress with teamwork, job satisfaction, management perception, and safety climate. In addition, there were different attitudes toward patient safety culture between gender and physician vs non-physician and management staff vs non-management staff. CONCLUSION: The findings suggested that certain improvements are needed, especially in the field of communication and stress recognition with regard to patient safety culture.