Hospital Employees View Patient Safety Culture Differently According to Their Role

C-suite/executives/senior leaders, supervisors and managers have different perspectives of patient safety culture than physicians, care aides, nurses, and staff, revealing the need to improve patient safety culture for those who provide direct patient care and to improve communication across leaders and all employee roles. Hospitals should focus on improving communication and management support related to patient safety for physicians and on teamwork, staffing and work pace for care aides. Understanding the root of variability in how pharmacists assist and support patient handoffs and information exchange and how physicians, care aides and staff communicate, accept managerial input, and learn from errors are critical as they may affect safety and event reporting. Hospital leaders could also hold discussions at the microclimate level (unit) for those doing well and those not doing to discuss focusing on the culture of patient safety performance. Ensuring that communication is open and transparent across all hospital employees is critical to providing safe, effective patient care.