Health care professionals' skills regarding patient safety.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The importance of patient safety is growing worldwide, and every day, health care professionals face various challenges in how to provide safe care for their patients. Patient safety skills are one of the main tools to ensure safe practice. This study looks to describe health care professionals' skills regarding patient safety.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were collected using the skill scale of the Patient Safety Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge (PS-ASK) instrument from different health care professionals (n=1082: physicians, head nurses, nurses and nurse assistants) working in hospitals for adult patients in three regional multi-profile hospitals in the western part of Lithuania.

RESULTS: Overall, the results of this study show that based on their own evaluations, health care professionals were competent regarding their safety skills. In particular, they were competent in the sub-scale areas of error analysis (mean=3.09) and in avoiding threats to patient safety (mean=3.31), but only somewhat competent in using decision support technology (mean=2.00). Demographic and other work related background factors were only slightly associated with these patient safety skills areas. Especially, it was noted that nurse assistants may need more support from managers and colleagues in developing their patient safety skills competence.

CONCLUSIONS: This study has served to investigate the general skills of health care professionals in regard to patient safety. It provides new knowledge about the topic in the context of the Baltic countries and can thus be used in the future development of health care services.