Changes in patient safety culture: A patient safety intervention for Finnish forensic psychiatric hospital staff

AIM: To evaluate how a 3-year patient safety intervention, more specifically, the implementation of a patient safety incident reporting system, influences patient safety culture. BACKGROUND: Positive patient safety culture improves both the quality of health care and patient safety. Nevertheless, nursing managers need tools that can help them develop and evaluate patient safety culture. METHODS: The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture was used to evaluate patient safety culture at two Finnish forensic psychiatric hospitals (study and control) over two periods, baseline and follow-up. Data were analysed using Z-score and T test statistics. RESULTS: The follow-up results from the study hospital showed that five patient safety culture dimensions exhibited a significantly (p < 0.05) positive change in positive response rates over the 3-year period. Furthermore, nine out of twelve patient safety culture dimensions at the study hospital showed a significant improvement in mean score. At the control hospital, only the dimension of frequency of reporting events showed a significantly positive change (p < 0.05) in mean score. CONCLUSION: This research shows that the studied patient safety intervention (implementation of the patient safety incident reporting system) significantly influences patient safety culture. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nursing managers should utilize a variety of patient safety interventions to improve patient safety and focus on leveraging information from patient safety incidents to advance patient safety culture.