International journal of nursing studies
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Patient safety is fundamental to healthcare quality. Attention has recently focused on the patient safety culture of an organisation and its impact on patient outcomes. A strong safety climate appears to be an essential condition for safe patient care in the hospital. A number of instruments are used to measure this patient safety climate or culture. The Safety Attitudes Questionnaire is a validated, widely used instrument to investigate multiple dimensions of safety climate at the clinical level in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings. ⋯ We conclude that in this study the Dutch version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire showed acceptable to good psychometric properties. In line with previous evidence, this instrument seems to be an acceptable to adequate tool to evaluate the safety climate.