Safety Culture Survey Results Identify Improvement Opportunities
More than 1,700 physicians, nurses and other clinical staff responded to the Center for Clinical Excellence’s 2009 Safety Culture Survey, offering details of how they perceive safety issues throughout the hospital. The survey asked respondents about their perceptions of teamwork, management support and communications.
The survey questions were taken from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Culture Survey Tool, which enables BWH to benchmark data and compare its results to national trends.
“In comparison to our 2007 survey, we have made some improvements on sharing feedback with staff and hand-off communications, but we still have room for improvement,” said Erin Graydon-Baker, MS, RRT, director of Patient Safety in the CCE.
BWH staff gave the hospital high marks on questions related to teamwork. Eighty-six percent of survey respondents agreed with the statement: “When a lot of work needs to get done quickly, we work together as a team to get the work done.”
The survey showed an increase in the amount of staff who agree that hospital management provides a work environment that promotes patient safety. On the 2007 survey, approximately 69 percent of respondents agreed with that statement, and that amount increased to 79 percent on the 2009 survey. Also, some 81 percent of respondents agreed that their supervisors or managers seriously consider staff suggestions for improving patient safety.
For handoff communications, 28 percent of responding attending physicians disagreed that “things fall between the cracks” when transferring patients from one unit or clinic to another, and 29 percent of responding attending physicians disagreed that important patient care information often is lost during shift changes. “We understand that this continues to be an area of improvement for the hospital,” Graydon-Baker said.
Asked about feedback, 35 percent of staff agreed that they are given feedback about changes put in place following errors based on event reports. This is another area targeted for improvements.
The Department of Nursing and a physician task force have been leading efforts to improve hand-off communications from nurse to nurse, attending to attending and notifications from residents to attendings.
“We’re continuing this work and looking to services, departments and units to use specific data to think about improvements on a local level,” Graydon-Baker said.