Patient Safety Culture among Healthcare Providers in an Accredited and Non-Accredited Hospital in Cairo: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Good clinical practice means providing care that is safe and effective without doing harm. Thisrequires proper identification and acceptance of errors through sound safety culture. Although accreditation is on the rise, little is known on its impact on patient safety culture. The studyaimis to study the impact of accreditation on patient safety culture and identify factors affecting safety culture.The study was carried out in two matched hospitals; an accredited hospital and a non-accredited one. A total of 312 health care providers answered an Arabic version of the hospital survey on patient safety culture.It was found thataccreditation had a significant positive effect on all aspects of patient safety culture except staffing and event reporting. Alsoit was the only independent factor to affect patient safety culture among the studied factors with the accredited hospital having odds of 3.83 higher than the non-accredited one to have 50% or more total score of safety culture (95% CI 2.1-6.9). More than 75% of respondents from the accredited hospital scored ≥50% total safety culture versus only 43.8% from the non-accredited hospital, with difference of 32.2% (p<0.001).