Comparison of the Quality of Patient Safety: According to the Clinical Experience of Hospital Nurse in Japan

Monday, July 11, 2011

Hiroe Miura, RN, DNSc
School of Nursing, Gunma Prefectural College of Health Science, Maebashi, Japan
Naomi Funashima, RN, DNSc
School of Nursing, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will understand Japanese situation about the patient safety practice.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will discuss the CE program on the patient safety practice.

Purpose: To comparison of the quality of patient safety according to the clinical experience of hospital nurse in Japan.

Methods:  The Patient Safety Practice Scale (PSPS) (Miura, Funashima, 2010) was used to measure the quality of patient safety practice. The PSPS had 40 items, 5-point Likert-type scale, and consisted of 8 subscales. Each subscale contained 5 items. The scale had well-established internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha=0.956) and construct validity. The Nurses’ Attributes Questionnaire (NAQ) was used to collect the demographic data. NAQ’s content validity was established by an expert panel. One thousand and three hundred fifty nurses, randomly sampled, were asked to answer two instruments and to post completed questionnaire by using stamped addressed envelope. The data were analyzed statistically by descriptive statistic, ANOVA, and correlation coefficient.

Results: Eight hundred and thirty four (61.8%) nurses were responded, and 779 valid data were analyzed. The mean of PSPS's total score was 149.6 (SD20.7). The rank order of SPSP’s total scores was as follows: 1) 2nd-year nurses (mean=149.2, SD=18.3), 2) 4th-year nurses (mean=147.6, SD=16.3), 3) 9th-year nurses from 5th-year (mean=144.5, SD=19.3), 4) nurses over 10th-year (mean=143.1, SD=21.1), 5) 1st-year nurses (mean=142.3, SD=22.9), and 6) 3rd-year nurses (mean=138.9, SD=16.5). ANOVA showed no significant differences on SPSP’s total scores among 6 groups (F=0.916, p=0.471). ANOVA showed no significant differences on SPSP’s subscale sores among 6 groups. There were weak correlation between years of clinical experience and 3 subscale scores. The 3 subscales were “providing information and sharing them exactly (r=0.229,p<0.001),” “acquiring knowledge and promoting learning activity of patients/colleagues (r=0.217,p<0.001)”, “practicing certainly by obeying principle (r=0.241, p<0.001)”. 

Conclusion: The results suggested that each hospital has to provide programs on patient safety practice periodically regardless of nurses' clinical experiences in Japan.