Background and purpose: Through the development of security
systems, improvement of knowledge and skills, and cooperation with
other professions anesthesiologists have become leaders in improving
patient safety and creators of a positive culture of patient safety among
health professionals in the developing countries. Taking the significant
progress made in regional anesthesia in Croatia as an indicator of the
aforementioned role that anesthesiologists play within the health care
system of transitional societies such as Croatian, research was carried
out with the purpose of detecting differences in patient safety culture
among anesthesiology, surgical and non-surgical staff in a sample of
Croatian hospitals.
Material and methods: The research covered 560 health professionals
in three general hospitals in Croatia who anonymously and voluntarily filled in the Croatian version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC). One-way analysis of variance and multiple post hoc test according to Bonferroni were carried out in order to test statistical differences in 12 dimensions of patient safety culture between surgical, non-surgical and anesthesiology staff.
Results: Statistically significant differences between the three groups
of staff were found in 9 out of 12 HSOPSC dimensions, which was
distributed to differences between anesthesiology and non-surgical
staff in 7 dimensions, anesthesiology and surgical staff in 2 dimensions,
and surgical versus non-surgical staff in 3 dimensions.
Conclusions: Our research proved the hypothesis that anesthesiologists
are the profession that is the most aware of and devoted to patient safety problems, spreading their positive influence through patient safety culture to all anesthesiology staff as well as to those with
whom they predominantly collaborate
