• Lena Burström, Anna Letterstål, Marie-Louise Engström, Anders Berglund, and Mats Enlund.
• Centre for Clinical Research, Uppsala University, Västmanlands County Hospital, Västerås, Sweden. lena.burstrom@ltv.se.
• Bmc Health Serv Res. 2014 Jan 1; 14: 296.

BackgroundPatient safety is of the utmost importance in health care. The patient safety culture in an institution has great impact on patient safety. To enhance patient safety and to design strategies to reduce medical injuries, there is a current focus on measuring the patient safety culture. The aim of the present study was to describe the patient safety culture in an ED at two different hospitals before and after a Quality improvement (QI) project that was aimed to enhance patient safety.MethodsA repeated cross-sectional design, using the Hospital Survey On Patient Safety Culture questionnaire before and after a quality improvement project in two emergency departments at a county hospital and a university hospital. The questionnaire was developed to obtain a better understanding of the patient safety culture of an entire hospital or of specific departments. The Swedish version has 51 questions and 15 dimensions.ResultsAt the county hospital, a difference between baseline and follow-up was observed in three dimensions. For two of these dimensions, Team-work within hospital and Communication openness, a higher score was measured at the follow-up. At the university hospital, a higher score was measured at follow-up for the two dimensions Team-work across hospital units and Team-work within hospital.ConclusionThe result showed changes in the self-estimated patient safety culture, mainly regarding team-work and communication openness. Most of the improvements at follow-up were seen by physicians, and mainly at the county hospital.

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