A Comparison of Hospital Survey Patient Safety Culture Data in Magnet and non-Magnet Hospitals

Purpose:
To compare, using secondary data analysis, patient safety culture data in 149 Magnet hospitals and 1,146 non- Magnet hospitals in United States. Describing patient safety culture is an important first step in the development of safe work environments in hospitals.

Background/Significance:
Research has confirmed that MagnetŪ hospitals provide a positive work environment for nurses; research related to patient safety culture in Magnet hospitals versus non-Magnet hospitals is scarce. The overall research question was:what are staffs' perceptions of patient safety culture in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals.The aim of the study was to describe and compare staffs' perceptions of patient safety culture in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals.

Methods:
The sample consisted of staff in 1,295 hospitals that voluntarily entered information in the AHRQ Research Hospital SOPS 2012 and 2013 Database.The Hospital SOPS instrument measures hospital staffs' perceptions about patient safety issues, medical error and events reporting. The study was an exploratory correlational design and the data were unidentifiable.The only hospital characteristics were Magnet status (variable of interest) and hospital bed size (categorical measure).All results were reported in positive percent scores.Regression analysis,descriptive statistics,and hierarchical linear modeling described the comparisons of Hospital SOPS measures in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals.

Results:
Magnet hospitals showed small significant positive differences(2-4%) in 9 out of 12 multi-item categories.However,since AHRQ recommends, in large data bases,percentage differences of at least 5% between hospitals be considered meaningful,it could not be determined that Magnet hospitals showed more positive safety culture than non-Magnet hospitals.Similar results in reporting adverse events and patient safety grades determined that there were no meaningful differences between the two hospital groups. Under reporting of adverse events occurred at alarmingly high rates in both hospitals. More Magnet hospitals rated patient safety grades in their units as excellent or very good.

Conclusions and Implications for Practice:
Understanding how Magnet hospitals influence patient safety culture is currently evolving. Continued research in this area is warranted to explore this relationship, especially since Magnet hospitals have recently focused their attention on patient outcomes.