title: Measuring safety culture in Dutch primary care: psychometric characteristics of the SCOPE-PC questionnaire.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Patient safety has been a priority in primary healthcare in the last years. The prevailing culture is seen as an important condition for patient safety in practice and several tools to measure patient safety culture have therefore been developed. Although Dutch primary care consists of different professions, such as general practice, dental care, dietetics, physiotherapy and midwifery, a safety culture questionnaire was only available for general practices. The purpose of this study was to modify and validate this existing questionnaire to a generic questionnaire for all professions in Dutch primary care.
  
  
  METHODS
  A validated Dutch questionnaire for general practices was modified to make it usable for all Dutch primary care professions. Subsequently, this questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 2400 practices from eleven primary care professions. The instrument's factor structure, reliability and validity were examined using confirmatory and explorative factor analyses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  921 questionnaires were returned. Of these, 615 were eligible for factor analysis. The resulting SCOPE-PC questionnaire consisted of seven dimensions: 'open communication and learning from errors', 'handover and teamwork', 'adequate procedures and working conditions', 'patient safety management', 'support and fellowship', 'intention to report events' and 'organisational learning' with a total of 41 items. All dimensions had good reliability with Cronbach's alphas ranging from 0.70-0.90, and the questionnaire had a good construct validity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The SCOPE-PC questionnaire has sound psychometric characteristics for use by the different professions in Dutch primary care to gain insight in their safety culture.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Practice, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. N.J.Verbakel@umcutrecht.nl.
authors.forename: Natasha J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Verbakel
authors.forename: Dorien L M
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Zwart
authors.forename: Maaike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Langelaan
authors.forename: Theo J M
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Verheij
authors.forename: Cordula
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wagner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D015279:Organizational Culture; D061214:Patient Safety / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D058007:Physicians, Primary Care / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
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