Speaking up about patient safety concerns: The influence of safety management approaches and climate on nurses' willingness to speak up

Background Speaking up is important for patient safety, but healthcare professionals often hesitate to voice their concerns. Direct supervisors have an important role in influencing speaking up. However, good insight into the relationship between managers’ behaviour and employees’ perceptions about whether speaking up is safe and worthwhile is still lacking. Aim To explore the relationships between control-based and commitment-based safety management, climate for safety, psychological safety and nurses’ willingness to speak up. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey study, resulting in a sample of 980 nurses and 93 nurse managers working in Dutch clinical hospital wards. To test our hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses (at ward level) and multilevel regression analyses were conducted. Results Significantly positive associations were found between nurses’ perceptions of control-based safety management and climate for safety (β=0.74; p<0.001), and between the perceived levels of commitment-based management and team psychological safety (β=0.36; p<0.01). Furthermore, team psychological safety is found to be positively related to nurses’ speaking up attitudes (B=0.24; t=2.04; p