Developing a model for hospital inherent safety assessment: Conceptualization and validation

BACKGROUND: Paying attention to the safety of hospitals, as the most crucial institute for providing medical and health services wherein a bundle of facilities, equipment, and human resource exist, is of significant importance. OBJECTIVE: The present research aims at developing a model for assessing hospitals' safety based on principles of inherent safety design. METHODS: Face validity (30 experts), content validity (20 experts), construct validity (268 examples), convergent validity, and divergent validity have been employed to validate the prepared questionnaire; and the items analysis, the Cronbach's alpha test, ICC test (to measure reliability of the test), composite reliability coefficient have been used to measure primary reliability. The relationship between variables and factors has been confirmed at 0.05 significance level by conducting confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modeling (SEM) technique with the use of Smart-PLS. RESULTS: R-square and load factors values, which were higher than 0.67 and 0.300 respectively, indicated the strong fit. Moderation (0.970), simplification (0.959), substitution (0.943), and minimization (0.5008) have had the most weights in determining the inherent safety of hospital respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Moderation, simplification, and substitution, among the other dimensions, have more weight on the inherent safety, while minimization has the less weight, which could be due do its definition as to minimize the risk.