A nationwide Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture in Belgian hospitals: Analysis and benchmarking

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to measure patient safety culture in Belgian hospitals using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture and to provide benchmarking of the results. The benchmark database includes 55 225 respondents from 90 acute, 42 psychiatric and 11 long-term care hospitals (53.7% response rate). Overall dimensional scores were low, although scores were found to be higher for psychiatric and long-term care hospitals than for acute hospitals.The nationwide safety culture assessment confirms the need for a long-term national initiative to improve patient safety culture and provides each hospital with a baseline patient safety culture profile to direct an intervention plan.