Hospital safety ratings and error reporting by provider

Background Patient safety remains a critical challenge in healthcare services. The study objective was to compare advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, and attending physicians’ responses to overall patient safety ratings and error reporting. Methods A dataset from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provided responses related to patient safety and error reporting submitted by 3659 advanced practice nurses, 1044 physician assistants, and 5140 attending physicians. The Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Cultural version 2.0 was the instrument used in this study. A secondary data analysis was conducted with the dataset. Results Respondents identified the hospital settings as teaching (70.6%) and nonteaching (29%); ownership included public government (18%), public nongovernment nonprofit (73%), and private nongovernment for-profit (9%). Respondents identified their work areas as multiple units, medical/surgical units, patient care units, surgical services, or clinical services (76%). Findings showed each of the three hospital positions rated patient safety significantly differently. Advanced practice nurses rated patient safety lower (µ = 3.4) than physician assistants (µ = 3.6) and attending physicians (µ = 3.8). Linear relationships were also found to be significantly different, indicating that the level of position correlates with changes in error reporting and overall patient safety ratings. Conclusions The key to meeting the goal of “zero” harm and National Steering Committee's goal for healthcare systems to foster and sustain a robust safety culture is first recognizing that errors do occur.