Improving patient safety at pediatric intensive care units: Exploring healthcare providers' perspective

Introduction: Safety culture environment is one of the main barriers to improve patient care safety. Assessment of healthcare providers' perspectives towards patient safety and its no-blame culture helps to identify the most problematic areas for improvement. Objectives: The researchers attempted to assess healthcare providers' perspectives towards patient safety culture in one of the challenging high risk environment, hence establishing priorities for the patient safety improvement. Methods: This exploratory study adopted a qualitative design, it was conducted in the four general Pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) of Cairo University Children Hospital in Egypt, recruiting 30 healthcare providers for Focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviewing 8 hospital key personnel using semi-structured guide consisted of open-ended questions followed by brain storming sessions. Results: The participants' age ranged from 25 to 48 years, their median work duration in the hospital was11 years and 84.9% of them had never attended patient safety training. All participants saw patient safety as an important aspect of patient care quality and a priority to the hospital and that proper incidence reporting, infection control, team work and non-punitive culture can improve patient safety practices. The most prioritized intervention to be implemented is to 'conduct patient safety training sessions'. Conclusion: All participants had positive attitude towards patient safety culture. The PICUs patient safety practices had much room for improvement.