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.