Measuring Patient Safety Culture

The Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) is the assessment instrument most widely used to gather staff perceptions of a patient safety culture within a healthcare setting. It surveys hospital executives, clinicians, and support staff to discover what is going well in that setting and identify areas for improvement. It assesses eight areas of healthcare activity including how staff communicate with and relate to each other, and how well teams work together. Findings from 26 peer-reviewed academic research articles that have used the HSOPSC to assess patient safety culture in various hospital settings around the world and in various groups from 2018 to 2024 are presented in this chapter. The results suggest that a patient safety culture develops in work teams which conduct effective handovers and transitions, communicate effectively about patient progress and treatment care needs, and report adverse events so that staff can learn from their mistakes. These teams work well as one unit focused on patient care and treatment. They have managers who respond favorably to the reporting of adverse incidents and, in fact, promote reporting. Once reported, managers take immediate and appropriate action to remedy the situation by stabilizing the patient, supporting the team, and respecting individual professionalism. Two main inhibitors to the development of a patient safety culture were identified in the research: (i) when staff feel unable to report adverse events because of fear of a punitive response from their manager and (ii) when staffing issues result in increased workload and/or an inappropriate mix of staff given their clinical expertise or experience.