Evaluation of the safety culture
Improving the safety of care is a priority issue for the HUG. To this end, the hospitals regularly carry out surveys to assess the safety culture of their employees. To do this, they use questionnaires originally from the aviation field, which have been adapted to the field of healthcare. The questions address various topics:
- overall perception of safety
- frequency of reporting undesirable events
- the continuous improvement approach
- teamwork within the divisions/departments
- inter-departmental collaboration.
According to the latest staff survey carried out at the end of 2016, safety culture at the HUG is on the rise in almost every respect. The best result was for teamwork within a department, division or unit with 73% positive responses, while teamwork between departments saw the worst results in the first survey with only 28.6% positive responses. The area seeing the most improvement is management support for the safety of care, which has gained 10% of positive responses. The worst score relates to the fear of punishment in the event of error, or the fear of being blamed. In light of this result, a training program will be implemented in 2018 concerning the management of mistakes by senior managers. The next survey is planned for 2018.
Percentage of positive responses for the 10 aspects of our healthcare safety culture & comparison of HUG results 2013/2016.
| Average % | ||
| 2013 | 2016 | |
| Overall perception of the safety of care | 45.2 | 49.1 |
| Reporting undesirable events | 59.6 | 64.3 |
| Expectations and actions of superiors regarding the safety of care | 61.7 | 66.6 |
| Learning organization and continuous improvement | 56.0 | 56.4 |
| Teamwork in the department/unit | 72.7 | 73.2 |
| Freedom of expression | 54.3 | 57.2 |
| Non-punitive response to error | 29.3 | 33.6 |
| Human resources | 31.1 | 35.8 |
| Management support for the safety of care | 35.3 | 45.6 |
| Teamwork between the different establishment divisions | 28.6 | 35.0 |
(In normal characters, the aspects that have seen improvement, in italic, the aspects with no significant statistical change.)