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

Mohammed M AlMaani,1 Khaled F Salama2 1King Abdulaziz-National Guard Hospital Al-Ahsa, Dammam, Saudi Arabia; 2Department of Environmental Health, College of Public Health, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi ArabiaCorrespondence: Khaled F SalamaDepartment of Environmental Health, College of Public Health, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, PO Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Saudi ArabiaEmail ksalama@iau.edu.saIntroduction: 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.Keywords: primary health-care center, safety attitude, patient safety, safety climate, work conditio