The Swedish Safety Attitudes Questionnaire-Operating Room Version: Psychometric Properties in the Surgical Team.

PURPOSE: To validate the Swedish Safety Attitudes Questionnaire-operating room (SAQ-OR) version by re-evaluating its psychometric properties for the surgical team.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional questionnaire study.

METHODS: 541 surgical team members including perioperative nurses, physicians, and licensed practical nurses at three Swedish hospitals were included.

FINDINGS: For the total sample, the Cronbach's α for the six factors ranged from 0.51 to 0.76. Goodness-of-fit analyses indicated that the six-factor model was acceptable and the factor loadings were statistically significant. The test of the hypothesized relationships among the factors showed a correlation from 0.936 to 0.042.

CONCLUSIONS: The refined Swedish version of the SAQ-OR is a reasonably reliable and acceptably valid instrument for the measurement of patient safety climate in the surgical team. However, the results related to the different analyses varied among the different professionals and further research, using larger samples, is needed to explore these differences, especially among the physicians.