Patient safety friendly hospital standards and customer orientation among Iranian nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: The quality of health services is determined on the basis of meeting customers’ needs and expectations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems have faced high degrees of uncertainty as well as a variety of challenges. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between patient safety friendly hospital standards and customer orientation among Iranian nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: This cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 266 nurses working in Imam Khomeini Hospital, Tehran, Iran selected via stratified sampling in 2020. The study data were collected using a questionnaire including demographic information, patient safety friendly hospital initiatives, and Kim’s customer orientation scale. Then, the data were entered into the SPSS V.16 software and were analysed using descriptive statistics, dispersion indices and correlation tests. RESULTS: The mean age and mean duration of working as a nurse were 38.60+7.94 and 13.87+7.41 years, respectively. From the nurses’ perspective, the means of patient safety friendly hospital standards and customer orientation were 97.35±16.59 and 16.40±2.62, respectively, both of which were at the moderate level. In addition, patient safety friendly hospital standards and all its dimensions were positively correlated to customer orientation (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: From the nurses’ viewpoint, the patient safety friendly hospital standards and customer orientation were both at the moderate level during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, patient safety friendly hospital standards and all its dimensions were significantly associated with customer orientation. In other words, increase in the patient safety friendly hospital standards was accompanied by an increase in the nurses’ customer orientation. These results can provide the organisations delivering health services with the opportunity for management on the basis of multicriteria decision making so as to adapt with the patient safety friendly hospital standards and to internalise customer orientation among nurses.