attitude among urmia medical university health workers about patient safety

a ttitude among urmia medical university health workers about patient safety     khalilzadeh h [1] , hemmati maslakpak m [2] *, mohaddesi h [3] , zare fazlollahi z [4]     received: 17 jun , 2013 accepted: 14 aug , 2013     abstract   background & aims : today, patient safety is a critical factor in the quality of health care. the main problem of health care providers in improving their quality of care is their unsafe attitudes and behaviors about patient safety, which may be related to errors and adverse events in the hospitals. this research tries to assess the attitude of health care staff toward patient safety in kosar wards as well as in urban health clinics.   materials & methods : this is a descriptive-analytic study in which 120 people participated who were working in kosar ward and urban health clinics affiliated to urmia university of medical sciences. safety attitude questionnaire (saq) was used to collect the data. data analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi-square test.   results: the findings showed that most of the employees (90%) had the moderate attitude, and (3/3%) had a poor attitude toward patient safety. the chi-square test showed a significant relationship (p <0/05) between the professional staff attitude and some aspects of patient safety (for example: teamwork, job satisfaction and job stress).   conclusion: most employees had the moderate attitude toward patient safety. an effort of hospital managers and the staff is essential and important to improve patient safety. to achieve this goal, solutions such as improving the attitude of the employees, senior management tends to patient safety, creation of the incident reporting system, and developing team working can be considered.   key words: attitude, safety, staff     address: nursing and midwifery faculty, urmia university of medical sciences, urmia, iran   tel: (+98) 441 2754961   email: [email protected]   [1] lecturer, nursing and midwifery faculty ,urmia university of medical sciences, urmia, iran  [2] asistant professor, nursing and midwifery faculty ,urmia university of medical sciences, urmia, iran (corresponding author)  [3] lecturer,midwifery department ,faculty nursing and midwifery, urmia university of medical sciences, retroductive health research center,urmia,iran  [4] msc medical records, faculty of paramedicine,urmia university of medical sciences, urmia, iran