Patient Safety Culture

Patient Safety Culture (PSC) is a subgroup of indicators within the HCQO database and provides data on how health workers perceive the organisational culture around patient safety in hospital settings. A positive patient safety culture – characterised by shared perceptions of the importance of safety, transparency, trust, and collective responsibility – is associated with better health outcomes, higher staff satisfaction, and improved organisational productivity. The database includes indicators on staff perceptions of effective teamwork, adequate staffing levels, open communication, response to error, managerial commitment to patient safety, staff workload, and information exchanges during shift changes. Indicators are disaggregated by job category (physicians, nursing staff, other clinical staff, support staff and management staff) to provide a granular view of patient safety culture across hospital staff roles.

For further information, please consult:

• The HCQO Definitions document provides indicator definitions and calculation methodologies of HCQO indicators
• The Sources and Methods survey on Patient Safety Culture (PSC) provides detailed country-specific information
• The OECD’s Health System Performance Assessment (HSPA) Framework outlines how HCQO indicators relate to the OECD’s HSPA domains of Access, Quality and People’s needs and preferences