Patient safety attitude in primary health care settings in Giza, Egypt: Cross-sectional study

Background Although there is increasing interest in patient safety, yet there is a general lack of awareness of the problem. This study aims to investigate patient safety attitudes among health care providers in primary health care (PHC) facilities in Egypt through employing the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire in order to explore the areas of deficiency and opportunities for improvement concerning patients' safety. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in an urban PHC and one rural unit where 130 working team at the time of the study was interviewed with response rate of 63.7%, SPSS 18 was used for data analysis. Descriptive analyses, independent samples t tests, and/or analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed to examine the relationship between patient's safety culture and independent variables, namely, profession, gender, or age groups. Results Highest positivity percentage was found for job satisfaction dimension (23%), while it was the least for the ambulatory care (2.3%). Participants belonging to age group older than or equal to 50 scored statistically significant mean values in both job satisfaction and working conditions dimensions (P = 0.03 and 0.02, respectively). Health care managers scored statistically significant mean in the ambulatory care dimension 68.1 +/- 15.3, (P = 0.03). Conclusion Managers had more positive attitudes regarding patient safety issues in the practices they are responsible for, compared with the employees. This could be an opportunity to enhance safety attitudes within PHC centers and gain their commitment to guarantee safer and higher quality patient care.