An Importance-Performance Analysis of Human Factors for Patient Safety Management Strategy

This study was undertaken to identify factors affecting perception of the importance and practice of patient safety management strategies among hospital employees in Taiwan. Importance-performance analysis enables management to evaluate and identify the major strengths and weaknesses of a hospital's key success factors. This work attempts to show the usefulness of an importance-performance analysis grid in evaluating hospital patient safety from employee perspectives in Taiwan. The authors identified a list of 19 items from patient safety literature reviews, and each item was rated using a 5-point Likert scale. Responses were obtained from 236 usable questionnaires. The importance-performance grid showed that nine items fell into the "Keep up the good work" quadrant, two items fell into the "Concentrate here" quadrant, six items fell into the "Low priority" quadrant, and two items fell into the "Possible overkill" quadrant. The findings suggest that the vision of the supervisor is necessary in order to better match organizational characteristics and enhance medical quality. The results are useful in identifying areas for strategic focus to help hospital managers develop patient safety strategies.