Assessing safety culture: guidelines and recommendations.

P. J. Pronovost

Commentary

Assessing safety culture: guidelines and recommendations.

August 17, 2005

Pronovost PJ. Quality and Safety in Health Care. 2005;14(4).

View more articles from the same authors.

This commentary provides an overview of the origin and use of safety climate surveys and suggests effective methods for using the tools.

Available at

Free full text

PubMed citation

Related Resources From the Same Author(s)

Ethics, oversight and quality improvement initiatives.

August 25, 2010

What is the patient really taking? Discrepancies between surgery and anesthesiology preoperative medication histories.

December 21, 2005

Novel analysis of clinically relevant diagnostic errors in point-of-care devices.

October 19, 2011

Intensive care unit nurse staffing and the risk for complications after abdominal aortic surgery.

April 3, 2005

Time to accelerate integration of human factors and ergonomics in patient safety.

January 11, 2012

Evaluation of the culture of safety: survey of clinicians and managers in an academic medical center.

March 6, 2005

Variation in caregiver perceptions of teamwork climate in labor and delivery units.

July 5, 2006

Beyond "see one, do one, teach one": toward a different training paradigm.

February 25, 2009

Underreporting of patient safety incidents reduces health care's ability to quantify and accurately measure harm reduction.

November 17, 2010

A public health approach to patient safety reporting systems is urgently needed.

June 8, 2011

Health system leaders' role in addressing racism: time to prioritize eliminating health care disparities.

February 10, 2021

Rural hospital nursing: better environments = shared vision and quality/safety engagement.

April 29, 2009

Developing a measure of value in health care.

June 1, 2016

Establishing an ambulatory medicine quality and safety oversight structure: leveraging the fractal model.

March 9, 2016

Impact of attending physician workload on patient care: a survey of hospitalists.

February 6, 2013

Measurement as a performance driver: the case for a national measurement system to improve patient safety.

April 26, 2017

On the CUSP: Stop BSI: evaluating the relationship between central line–associated bloodstream infection rate and patient safety climate profile.

November 12, 2014

How safe is my intensive care unit? Methods for monitoring and measurement.

November 21, 2007

Clinical review: Checklists—translating evidence into practice.

January 27, 2010

Learning accountability for patient outcomes.

July 21, 2010

We need leaders: the 48th Annual Rovenstine Lecture.

May 19, 2010

Enhancing physicians' use of clinical guidelines.

January 8, 2014

An interview with Peter Pronovost

November 2, 2005

The Johns Hopkins Hospital: identifying and addressing risks and safety issues.

March 6, 2005

The potential of Twitter as a data source for patient safety.

January 27, 2016

Towards high-reliability organising in healthcare: a strategy for building organisational capacity.

June 7, 2017

Unintended doses in radiotherapy—over, under and outside?

April 18, 2018

Identifying potential predictors of a safe attending physician workload: a survey of hospitalists.

October 30, 2013

Requirements for the design and implementation of checklists for surgical processes.

August 13, 2008

Effective interventions and implementation strategies to reduce adverse drug events in the Veterans Affairs (VA) system.

February 20, 2008

Unplanned return to theater: a quality of care and risk management index?

May 27, 2015

Barriers to incident notification in a regional prehospital setting.

July 28, 2010

Retrieval medicine: a review and guide for UK practitioners. Part 2: safety in patient retrieval systems.

December 13, 2006

Handoffs, safety culture, and practices: evidence from the hospital survey on patient safety culture.

August 24, 2016

Cost-effectiveness of a quality improvement programme to reduce central line–associated bloodstream infections in intensive care units in the USA.

October 15, 2014

Psychometric properties of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: findings from the UK.

May 5, 2010

Cognitive errors detected in anaesthesiology: a literature review and pilot study.

January 25, 2012

ReCASTing the RCA: an improved model for performing root cause analyses.

May 26, 2010

National hospital ratings systems share few common scores and may generate confusion instead of clarity.

March 11, 2015

Implementing standardized operating room briefings and debriefings at a large regional medical center.

August 5, 2009

Balancing "no blame" with accountability in patient safety.

October 7, 2009

Rethinking rapid response teams.

September 29, 2010

Building a highway to quality health care.

September 7, 2016

"Never events" and the quest to reduce preventable harm.

June 3, 2015

A piece of my mind. From shame to guilt to love.

January 6, 2016

Progress in patient safety: a glass fuller than it seems.

August 28, 2013

Measuring preventable harm: helping science keep pace with policy.

April 1, 2009

Diagnostic errors, health disparities, and artificial intelligence: a combination for health or harm.

September 1, 2021

Forum: The 100,000 Lives Campaign: a scientific and policy review [with IHI response].

November 1, 2006

Shepherding change: how the market, healthcare providers, and public policy can deliver quality care for the 21st century.

March 1, 2006

Disclosing adverse events in clinical practice: the delicate act of being open.

February 2, 2022

Uncomfortable prescribing decisions in hospitals: the impact of teamwork.

November 25, 2009

Interventions to improve teamwork and communications among healthcare staff.

March 2, 2011

Failed spinal anaesthesia: mechanisms, management, and prevention.

July 8, 2009

Decision-making and safety in anesthesiology.

November 21, 2012

Expanded pharmacy technician roles: accepting verbal prescriptions and communicating prescription transfers.

February 1, 2017

Time for prefilled syringes - everywhere.

March 13, 2024

Adverse drug reactions and therapeutic errors in older adults: a hazard factor analysis of poison center data.

November 22, 2006

The medicolegal aspect of error in pathology: a search of jury verdicts and settlements.

April 25, 2007

Patient safety in cataract surgery.

July 20, 2005

Cognitive errors in diagnosis: instantiation, classification, and consequences.

March 6, 2005

Computerized physician order entry: helpful or harmful?

March 6, 2005

Medication errors: the impact of prescribing and transcribing errors on preventable harm in hospitalised patients.

March 4, 2009

Assessing and improving safety culture throughout an academic medical centre: a prospective cohort study.

December 22, 2010

Patient risk factors for medical injury: a case–control study.

January 26, 2011

Sex differences in operating room care giver perceptions of patient safety: a pilot study from the Veterans Health Administration Medical Team Training Program.

March 3, 2010

Beyond 'find and fix': improving quality and safety through resilient healthcare systems.

April 15, 2020

Impact of the initial response to COVID-19 on long-term care for people with intellectual disability: an interrupted time series analysis of incident reports.

October 14, 2020

Hand-off communication: a requisite for perioperative patient safety.

November 19, 2008

Viewing health care delivery as science: challenges, benefits, and policy implications.

October 13, 2010

The need for systems integration in health care.

March 9, 2011

Setting priorities for patient safety: ethics, accountability, and public engagement.

September 2, 2009

Toward a safer health care system: the critical need to improve measurement.

April 27, 2016

Patient safety and the problem of many hands.

March 30, 2016

Physician motivation: listening to what pay-for-performance programs and quality improvement collaboratives are telling us.

November 11, 2015

Organising a manuscript reporting quality improvement or patient safety research.

August 21, 2013

Rapid response systems: should we still question their implementation?

May 8, 2013

Science-based training in patient safety and quality.

June 27, 2012

Improving healthcare quality through organisational peer-to-peer assessment: lessons from the nuclear power industry.

June 6, 2012

Did hospital engagement networks actually improve care?

September 3, 2014

Misdiagnosis in the emergency department: time for a system solution.

February 8, 2023

Physician autonomy and informed decision making: finding the balance for patient safety and quality.

January 14, 2009

The checklist--a tool for error management and performance improvement.

November 29, 2006

Medication reconciliation in the emergency department: opportunities for workflow redesign.

December 15, 2010

Detecting drug interactions using personal digital assistants in an out-patient clinic.

October 31, 2007

Burnout in the neonatal intensive care unit and its relation to healthcare-associated infections.

June 14, 2017

Medication errors with antituberculosis therapy in an inpatient, academic setting: forgotten but not gone.

February 10, 2016

Monitoring and reducing central line-associated bloodstream infections: a national survey of state hospital associations.

June 30, 2010

A descriptive study of morbidity and mortality conferences and their conformity to medical incident analysis models: results of the morbidity and mortality conference improvement study, phase 1.

August 22, 2007

Identifying and categorising patient safety hazards in cardiovascular operating rooms using an interdisciplinary approach: a multisite study.

May 23, 2012

Preventing patient harms through systems of care.

August 22, 2012

Remote patient monitoring during COVID-19: an unexpected patient safety benefit.

March 23, 2022

Diagnostic errors--The next frontier for patient safety.

March 18, 2009

Ranking hospitals based on preventable hospital death rates: a systematic review with implications for both direct measurement and indirect measurement through standardized mortality rates.

April 3, 2019

Leading article: how can I optimise my role as a leader within the surgical team?

August 31, 2016

New legal protections for reporting patient errors under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act: a review of the medical literature and analysis.

September 1, 2010

Development and measurement of perioperative patient safety indicators.

March 18, 2015

Enhanced morbidity and mortality meeting and patient safety education for specialty trainees.

August 12, 2015

Systematic review of serious games for medical education and surgical skills training.

November 21, 2012

Medication administration process assessment: applying lessons learned from commercial aviation.

March 11, 2009

Related Resources

Surveys on Patient Safety Culture (SOPS) Medical Office Survey: 2024 User Database Report.

February 28, 2024

SOPS Surveys.

November 28, 2023

Factors determining safety culture in hospitals: a scoping review.

October 25, 2023

Root causes and preventability of unintentionally retained foreign objects after surgery: a national expert survey from Switzerland.

July 19, 2023

Surveys on Patient Safety Culture.

April 27, 2023

New AHRQ SOPS Workplace Safety Supplemental Item Set for Nursing Homes.

February 15, 2023

Development of the Leapfrog Group's bar code medication administration standard to address hospital inpatient medication safety.

September 21, 2022

Health care quality and safety in a correctional system: creating goals and performance measures for improvement.

August 17, 2022

Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2.0.

June 1, 2022

Culture as a Cure: Assessments of Patient Safety Culture in OECD Countries.

July 15, 2020

Harnessing the power of medical malpractice data to improve patient care.

January 8, 2020

Perceived patient safety culture in nursing homes associated with "Nursing Home Compare" performance indicators.

July 24, 2019

Opportunities for improvement in nursing homes: variance of six patient safety climate factor scores across nursing homes and wards—assessed by the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire.

July 17, 2019

Association between hospital safety culture and surgical outcomes in a statewide surgical quality improvement collaborative.

May 15, 2019

An organization-specific and modifiable inpatient safety composite measure.

May 8, 2019

Self-reported adherence to high reliability practices among participants in the Children's Hospitals' Solutions for Patient Safety Collaborative.

December 12, 2018

A factorial survey on safety behavior providing opportunities to improve safety.

December 5, 2018

ISMP Gap Analysis Tool (GAT) for Safe IV Push Medication Practices.

December 5, 2018

A systematic review of primary care safety climate survey instruments: their origins, psychometric properties, quality, and usage.

June 13, 2018

Postoperative opioid prescribing and the pain scores on Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey.

June 7, 2017

Exploring relationships between hospital patient safety culture and Consumer Reports safety scores.

March 15, 2017

Patient safety climate strength: a concept that requires more attention.

August 31, 2016

Comparing trainee and staff perceptions of patient safety culture.

June 29, 2016

Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2016 User Comparative Database Report.

June 8, 2016

Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2016 User Comparative Database Report.

May 11, 2016

Malpractice Risks in Communication Failures: 2015 Annual Benchmarking Report.

February 10, 2016

Community Pharmacy Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2015 User Comparative Database Report.

July 22, 2015

Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2014 User Comparative Database Report.

April 23, 2014

Improving America's Hospitals: The Joint Commission's Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2011.

September 28, 2011

The Safe Tables Collaborative: a statewide experience.

May 4, 2011

See More About The Topic

Hospitals

Health Care Providers

Benchmarking

Culture of Safety

Assessing safety culture: guidelines and recommendations.

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Assessing safety culture: guidelines and recommendations.

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue Logged In

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue logged in

New Users to the PSNet site