title: Patient Safety Culture Based on Medical Staff Attitudes in Khorasan Razavi Hospitals, Northeastern Iran.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Since establishing a safety culture in an organization is considered as the first step in patient safety improvement, there is always a need for updated field evaluation to better plan future decisions.
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed a cross-sectional, analytic-descriptive study in 25 hospitals related to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS) during a 3-month period from April to June 2012. A questionnaire, designed by previous patient safety culture studies with confirmed validity and reliability, was used and distributed among a sample of 922 staff, chosen randomly from the mentioned hospitals. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16.
  
  
  RESULTS
  "Organizational learning - continuous improvement" and "teamwork within unit" had the highest percentage of positive results as 79.85 ± 12.03% and 71.92 ± 17.08%, respectively; whereas "non-punitive response" to errors (21.57 ± 6.42) and "staffing" (26.36 ± 16.84) came out as the least important factors. There were no meaningful statistical relation between general features of the understudy hospitals including the number of beds, educational level or proficiency status with the general safety culture score.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Most of the safety culture aspects were reported as low to moderate in terms of importance. If something needs to be modified interventionally in this respect, "the approach to confront errors" would be a wise choice. This could be achieved by establishing an atmosphere of open communication and continuous learning through elimination of the fear for reporting errors and installing a more acceptable approach in hospitals.
authors.affiliation: 1. Research Center for Patient Safety, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Rozita
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Davoodi
authors.affiliation: 2. Atherosclerosis Prevention Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Mahmoud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mohammadzadeh Shabestari
authors.affiliation: 1. Research Center for Patient Safety, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Afsaneh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Takbiri
authors.affiliation: 1. Research Center for Patient Safety, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Azadeh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Soltanifar
authors.affiliation: 1. Research Center for Patient Safety, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Golnaz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sabouri
authors.affiliation: 1. Research Center for Patient Safety, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Shaghayegh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rahmani
authors.affiliation: 2. Atherosclerosis Prevention Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences , Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Toktam
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Moghiman
keywords: Adverse events; Hospital; Patient safety; Safety culture