title: Health care professionals' attitudes regarding patient safety: cross-sectional survey.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Patient safety is being seen as an increasingly important topic in the healthcare fields, and the rise in numbers of patient safety incidents poses a challenge for hospital management. In order to deal with the situation, it is important to know more about health care professionals' attitudes regarding patient safety. This study looks to describe health care professionals' attitudes regarding patient safety, and whether differences exist based on the background factors of study participants.
  
  
  METHODS
  A quantitative study using a questionnaire was conducted in three multi-disciplinary hospitals in Western Lithuania. Data was collected in 2014 from physicians, nurses and nurse assistants.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results showed positive safety attitudes, and these were especially related to the respondents' levels of job satisfaction. A respondent's older age was associated with how they evaluated their teamwork climate, safety climate, job satisfaction, and perception of management. Profession, working unit, length of work experience, information received about patient safety during education, further education, and working shifts were all associated with several safety attitude areas.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The safety attitudes of respondents were generally found to be positive. Attitudes related to patient safety issues were positive among health care professionals and opens the door for the open discussion of patient safety and adverse events. However, in future we also need to investigate the knowledge and skills professionals have in relation to patient safety, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the present situation.
authors.affiliation: School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland. Brasaite.Indre.X@student.uta.fi.|Faculty of Health Sciences, Klaipeda University, Klaipeda, Lithuania. Brasaite.Indre.X@student.uta.fi.
authors.forename: Indre
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Brasaite
authors.affiliation: School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.|, Pirkanmaa Hospital District, Tampere, Finland.
authors.forename: Marja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kaunonen
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health Sciences, Klaipeda University, Klaipeda, Lithuania.
authors.forename: Arvydas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Martinkenas
authors.affiliation: School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.
authors.forename: Tarja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Suominen
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D061214:Patient Safety
keywords: Attitude; Health care professionals; Nurse assistants; Nurses; Patient safety; Physicians