Safety Climate: Perception of Professionals in an Emergency Unit

Introduction: The emergency medical services, characterized as challenging and dynamic environments, are considered particularly prone to adverse events for several reasons, including the fast pace and frequency of complex conditions and life-threatening, the fact that health professionals meet both a great number of patients with poor clinical information without limits to the kind of problems or conditions and under time pressure^1-4. In 2004, the World Health Organization defined as a priority the development of research based on scientific evidence with best practices focused on patient safety. Since then, several studies have emerged in order to assess the climate of safety in health institutions^5-6. The Safety Climate can be defined as a temporary measure the state of the institution's safety culture and can be measured by individual perceptions of the organization's attitudes to safety culture⁷. Among the methods of measurement, the most widely used is the number, which takes place by means of scales and questionnaires that assess the attitudes, the climate of teamwork, job satisfaction, working conditions and stressors of individuals^8-9. The instrument in the context of care for emergency care can provide information about the main points that need to be improved. Objetive: To evaluate the perception of the safety climate of professionals working in an Emergency Unit of the State of São Paulo. Métodos: survey, transversal, descriptive and quantitative approach. To assess the security climate was used the “Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) - Short Form 2006”, validated and translated to Portuguese language⁶. Medical professionals, registered nurses, nursing assistants, psychologists, nutritionists, admin support and other professionals who work in this hospital for at least 6 months, with a minimum of 20 hours of work per week, were the study population. 139 professionals participated in the study. The data were entered into an electronic spreadsheet Microsoft Excel by double entry for further processing and analysis. Data processing were performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0. Results: The instrument is divided into two parts: the first consists of 41 items that address the six domaisn, and the second part aims to collect professional data (gender, professional category, work experience and the work unit, adult or pediatric). The six domains are: “climate of work team”, “security climate”, “work satisfaction”, “stress”, and “perception of hospital management”, “perception of unit management” and “work conditions”. Answers were given in 5 points according to the Likert scale. The final score of the scale varies from 0 to 100, whereupon 0 is the worst perception of security attitudes by health professionals and 100 is the best perception. The majority of study participants agreed partially or totally with the presented questions. Most professionals (79,6%) informed that they like their work. Fifty point seven percent (50,7%) professionals believe less effective at work when fatigued. 36,7% professionals disagree that the levels of staffing in this clinical area are sufficient to handle the number of patients. There was a female predominance among professionals working in the hospital and professionals aged 21 and over in the unit operating time. Conclusion: The satisfaction of the professional, the dialogue and support staff of the administration are factors that contribute to ensuring patient safety, especially in emergency medical services, especially in emergency services, considered particularly problematic with regard to patient safety, making it more vulnerable to incidents and adverse events. Know the perception of professionals about the patient safety climate contributes to the improvement of health care and to reduce risks to patients.

Keywords: safety patient, organizational culture, safety management, emergency medical services.

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