الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The issues of patient safety have become a priority in health policy and healthcare management and remain as one of the most critical challenges facing health care today. Nurses are the health care professionals most likely to intercept errors and prevent harm to patients. Nurse interns’ are considered an important target group for patient safety education, and can play a major role in patient safety improvement (WHO, 2010).
The aim of this study was to assess the awareness of nurse interns regarding patient safety culture. This study was carried out at Ain-Shams University Hospitals using a descriptive cross-sectional design. These include the following hospitals: Ain-Shams University Hospital, Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, El-demerdash Hospital, Pediatrics Hospital, and Ain-Shams University Specialized Hospital. The study subjects consisted of 160 nurse interns having their training in these settings. The data were collected through a self-administered sheet which is based on the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSPSC). The data were collected through a self-administered sheet which included basic nurse intern’s socio-demographic characteristics questionnaire to assess the awareness of patient safety culture in 12 dimensions.
A pilot study was conducted on 18 of the nurse interns in the study setting to examine the practicability and applicability of the tool, and its reliability which proved to be excellent with Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.92. The field work was from June to the end of September 2013.
The main study findings revealed the following:
Nurse interns’ age ranged between 21 and 23 years, with more females (64.4%) having previous work (65.0%).
The total safety culture median score was 3.01, indicating uncertainty.
The dimension of organizational learning has the highest median score (3.67), followed by the dimension of teamwork within units (median 3.50).
On the other hand, the dimensions of frequency and number of events reported had the lowest scores with medians 2.33 and 2.00 respectively.
More than half of the nurse interns considered patient safety grade acceptable (56.9%), while only 1 (0.6%) considered it failing.
Concerning nurse interns’ agreement upon the number of events reported, about two-fifth of the nurse interns (38.8%) agreed that no events were reported, while only 2 (1.3%) of them agreed that 21 or more events were reported.
Nurse interns’ had general negative comments and fewer positive comments and suggestions.
Bivariate analyses identified some of the nurse interns’ characteristics to have significant associations with various dimensions such as work hospitals, type of pre-university education, previous work and its duration, duration of training in hospital, and training hours/week.
However, multivariate analysis showed that the training hours (<40/week) was the only statistically significant positive predictor of the total safety culture score.
In conclusion, the nurse interns’ awareness of patient safety culture is just average, tending towards uncertainty, being lowest regarding the frequency and number of events reported. However, patient safety grade is viewed as acceptable.
The number of training hours factor is the only significant predictor of nurse interns’ safety culture score.
In view of the study findings, it is recommended that an effective strong endeavor for safety culture should be initiated, supported, and maintained organization-wide. This requires considering safety culture as a top strategic priority, with clear related policies and procedures that should be communicated to all personnel, and a blame-free system and supportive environment. Patient safety culture must be an integral part of all educational activities of staff development, and in educational curricula of health professionals. Multi-disciplinary interventions to improve patient safety need to be developed, implemented, and their effectiveness assessed.