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Revised

‘What effect do safety culture interventions have on health care workers in hospital settings?’ A systematic review of the international literature

[version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]
PUBLISHED 18 Nov 2022
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Abstract

Introduction: Interventions designed to improve safety culture in hospitals foster organisational environments that prevent patient safety events and support organisational and staff learning when events do occur. A safety culture supports the required health workforce behaviours and norms that enable safe patient care, and the well-being of patients and staff. The impact of safety culture interventions on staff perceptions of safety culture and patient outcomes has been established. To-date, however, there is no common understanding of what staff outcomes are associated with interventions to improve safety culture and what staff outcomes should be measured.
Objectives: The study seeks to examine the effect of safety culture interventions on staff in hospital settings, globally.
Methods and Analysis: A mixed methods systematic review will be conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Searches will be conducted using the electronic databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Health Business Elite, and Scopus. Returns will be screened in Covidence according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. The mixed-methods appraisal tool (MMAT) will be used as a quality assessment tool. The Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias in randomised trials and non-randomised studies of interventions will be employed to verify bias. Synthesis will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute methodological guidance for mixed methods reviews, which recommends a convergent approach to synthesis and integration.
Discussion: This systematic review will contribute to the international evidence on how interventions to improve safety culture may support staff outcomes and how such interventions may be appropriately designed and implemented.

Keywords

patient safety, safety culture, hospital setting, healthcare worker, management

Revised Amendments from Version 1

A short summary of our updates is: an enhanced review of the deployment of safety culture as a concept, and the differing perspectives therein; an incorporation of the new research question recommended; a clarification on the specific focus and limitation of the research; clarification on the treatment of varying measurement instruments in the review; and an adjustment to the reference in the Lancet, as observed by both reviewers.

See the authors' detailed response to the review by Jane K. O'Hara
See the authors' detailed response to the review by Laura Adamson

Introduction

In 2000, the seminal report by the Institute of Medicine, To Err is Human, estimated over 90,000 patient deaths from medical error related to both system failure and poor organisational culture1. Since that time the incidence of patient safety events have remained high globally, due in part to the increasing complexity of healthcare and multi-morbidities2,3. To Err is Human recommended the concept of a patient safety culture to support the health workforce to provide safer care1,4. A major focus is on the reduction and mitigation of patient safety events, building a culture of reporting and learning from events, and supporting those affected by harm. Patients are considered first victims of patient safety events, while members of the workforce may experience a second victim impact, including physical and psychological distress5,6. How organisations respond to and learn from safety events affecting patients, families and staff is a marker of their patient safety culture and impacts the future safety and wellbeing of all concerned.

A safety culture is about shared organisational beliefs, values, norms and procedures for patient safety7,8. Safety climate, on the other hand, relates to a group or team perception of safety culture in organisations9. Rather than a specific process or technology, interventions to promote a culture of safety are designed to improve organisational conditions, enhancing leadership and teamwork among health care providers to support safe patient care1012. Safety culture interventions which target staff behaviour include executive walk-rounds or interdisciplinary rounds; multicomponent unit-based interventions; team training or communication initiatives11; frameworks for assessing, reporting and improving patient safety concerns; and standalone courses13,14. Patient safety educational interventions have also targeted the patient safety skills, attitudes and knowledge of healthcare workers to support safe patient care15, with safety culture likely moderating their impact16. While there are over 80 definitions of the terms “safety culture”, “patient safety culture” and “safety climate” across the literature17, core distinctions are set out in Table 1.

Table 1. Definitions and terms.

Patient
safety
culture
One aspect of an organization’s culture. It can be personified by shared values, beliefs, norms, and procedures
related to patient safety among members of an organization, unit, or team. It influences clinician and staff
behaviours, attitudes, and cognitions through cues about the relative priority of patient safety compared to other
goals such as throughput or efficiency11.
Safety
culture
The product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behaviour
that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety
management4.
Safety
climate
Group or team perceptions of safety culture in organisations. These are measurable aspects of safety culture, in
contrast to domains of culture such as behaviour and values9.

The theoretical construct of “safety culture” is contested in the literature18. One perspective posits that safety culture exists as an empirical measurable entity, as a product of values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours, to be manipulated by intervening in the healthcare system4. A contrasting perspective views the concept of safety culture more usefully deployed as a conceptual lens to inform analysis of the healthcare system18. In the latter, safety behaviours are a reflection of a generic organisational culture, emerging over time through other multiple internal and external system dynamics19. The dearth of robust, definitive explanations for changes in safety culture in the literature, particularly those that demonstrate little connection between safety culture interventions and reduced adverse events, is seen as supporting the conceptual approach19.

The empirical assessment of safety culture is also diverse, with multiple tools based on unique constructs of safety culture17. Furthermore, there is increased recognition of the need for triangulated data sources to assess the safety of healthcare organisations. Data on safety culture alone is not always considered sufficient to explain changes in safety behaviours and culture19,20. Additional data sources such as routine hospital data on adverse events, and multiple types of data such as quantitative and qualitative are needed to better inform analysis19. Recently, Churrucca et al. constructed common over-arching themes to synthesise domains of safety culture across different assessment tools17. These common themes enable comparison between various data collection instruments17.

Reflecting the above debates, evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to improve safety culture is weak, but suggests they contribute to clinical care processes and to improved clinician and staff perceptions of safety culture11. A safety culture can support staff to deliver effective and timely care to patients, increase staff competencies to collectively learn from patient safety events when they occur21, and can strengthen organisational support to healthcare teams to recover from patient safety events2226. Despite a focus on patient safety within measures of safety culture, there is inconsistent evidence for the link between interventions seeking to enhance a safety culture and patient outcomes such as hospital readmission rates, length of stay, pressure ulcers and falls, or ventilator associated pneumonia15,2731. The knowledge base on safety culture and patient outcomes is mixed, and a safety culture can moderate the effects of patient safety interventions on patients.

Measures of safety culture focus on staff attitudes and behaviours related to the prioritisation of patient safety4,32,33. In hospitals, evaluations of safety culture typically measure workforce related domains such as teamwork, communication, or information exchange, safety culture outcomes such as reporting rates, and patient outcomes such as falls, length of stay, or readmission rates11,27. A minority of measures include domains related to staff outcomes such as staff safety behaviours, staff injury rates, or well-being following a patient safety event34. Interventions to enhance safety culture are generally targeted at enhancing the norms and behaviours of hospital staff, but without an associated focus or exploration of the staff outcomes associated with safety culture. Evidence suggests that a safety culture can alleviate stress and burnout for staff3537, support recovery and learning from events, and safeguard against repeat events3841 by supporting staff to safely speak out about what is not working34,42. There is a now a need for a review of the impact of safety culture interventions on staff, to generate a common understanding of what staff outcomes are associated with interventions to improve safety culture and what staff outcomes should be measured. This research seeks to isolate staff outcomes, thereby examining the impact of safety culture interventions on staff where staff effects are claimed to take place.

Safety culture measurement tools focus on generating data to improve the safety of care provided to patients, and they do so by measuring staff perceptions of safety culture43, including staff attitudes, behaviours, and norms17. Depending on the instruments selected, staff outcomes and experiences may be captured through the deployment of safety culture measurement tools alone or in combination with other data sources. Prior research suggests a bi-directional relationship between safety culture and staff experience. The strongest evidence suggests that a safety culture influences certain staff outcomes such as staff behaviour to improve safety, event reporting, staff turnover, and injury rates among staff34,44. This literature reviews seeks to isolate staff outcomes as the point of interest including, but not limited to, burnout, stress, well-being, turnover or absenteeism36,45. In doing this, the review recognises studies that claim to manipulate safety culture.

Hospital staff experiences of and outcomes from interventions to improve safety culture are rarely examined in their own right. There is a knowledge gap on how safety culture affects staff in hospital settings. This systematic review seeks to address the knowledge gap and generate a conceptual understanding of associated staff outcomes based on the available published evidence, evaluating the state of evidence connecting safety culture to staff outcomes. Understanding these issues is important: as Shaw et al. have stated, ‘there is no patient safety without health worker safety’46.

Systematic review aims and objectives

A systematic review of the literature will examine the state of evidence connecting interventions to improve safety culture to hospital staff outcomes. The research questions are:

  • 1) How is safety culture defined in studies with interventions that aim to enhance it?

  • 2) What effects do interventions to improve safety culture have on hospital staff?

  • 3) What intervention features, safety culture domains or other factors explain these effects?

  • 4) What staff outcomes and experiences are identified?

Design

This study is a mixed methods systematic review47,48 of published literature guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines49.

Methods

Search strategy

Searches will be conducted using the electronic databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Health Business Elite, and Scopus. The search strategy will include the following terms: patient safety culture, hospital workforce and management, hospital setting, and high-, middle- and low-income countries. The primary search will begin in PUBMED with major keywords listed on the Medline Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms, such as “patient safety,” “safety climate,” and “hospital workforce”. Search terms will be used in conjunction with Boolean Operators “AND” and “OR.” Supplementary Files will provide details of the full search strategy. Reference lists of all articles included for full-text screening will also be searched. A sample of the search run through Medline is provided in Table 2.

Table 2. Search strategy.

KeywordRelated terms/synonyms
Intervention(safety OR quality OR organisation* OR just OR learning OR no-blame) N2 (culture OR climate OR attitude OR
patient OR support OR management OR improvement OR enhancement) N2 (intervention OR initiative OR
strategy) OR ((MH "Patient Safety") OR (MH "Safety+) AND (MH "Patients+")) AND ((MH "Quality Improvement+")
OR (MH "Organizational Culture"))
Context(health OR acute OR hospital) N2 (care OR center* OR centre* OR setting OR environment OR department OR
division* OR facilit* OR team* OR unit*) OR (MH "Hospitals+")
Population(administrat* OR allied OR auxiliary OR clinical OR frontline OR health* OR hospital OR licensed OR manager
OR management OR medical OR nurs* OR operations OR social OR support OR trained OR welfare) N2
(aide* OR agent* OR assistant* OR attendant* OR auxiliar* OR carer* OR caregiver* OR consultant* OR
distributor* OR individual* OR mentor* OR officer* OR person OR personnel OR practitioner* OR profession*
OR professional* OR promotor* OR provider* OR service* OR staff OR surveyor* OR therap* OR worker*) OR
(clinician* OR counselor* OR counsellor* OR doctor* OR doula* OR “general practitioner*” OR hospitalist* OR
midwi* OR nurse* OR paraprofessional* N2 health* OR physician* OR physiotherapist OR psychotherapist*
OR therapist* OR pharmacist*) OR (MH "Health Personnel+")
Outcomeperformance OR outcome OR burnout OR stress OR satisfaction OR improv* OR well-being OR second victim
OR report* OR working conditions OR behavior OR turnover OR injury rates OR problem solving OR safety
competenc* OR recover* OR skill OR attitude OR knowledge OR trust OR learn*
*is used to signify truncation

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Articles that report research involving both clinical and non-clinical members of the hospital workforce, and hospital management, will be included. Articles will be included if they are (a) quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods studies that evaluate an intervention in a hospital setting with an explicit aim to improve safety culture; (b) contain empirical data for analysis; (c) are available in any language; (d) are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals; and (e) are published since 2000 (from the publication date of To Err is Human).

Articles will be excluded if they (a) describe interventions that do not have an explicit aim to improve safety culture, (b) do not measure the effect of the intervention on safety culture, and/or (c) have a primary purpose other than hospital staff or patient safety culture. From a theoretical perspective, the research approach may limit the review to studies that view safety culture as amenable to change within a healthcare system, and exclude conceptual studies. The approach adopted is an explicit focus limited to studies that seek to measure change in safety culture as a totality and not sub-elements of safety-culture only. Limitations of the study design, such as bias toward quantitative studies and interventions which target safety culture will be acknowledged in the findings. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are illustrated in Table 3.

Table 3. Systematic review inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteriaExclusion criteria
PopulationHospital health care workers, including clinical, non-clinical
and management staff.
Primary or Specialist Care
InterventionIntervention studies designed to improve safety culture
that include an explicit measure of safety culture.
Descriptions of safety culture interventions without
any measures or outcomes captured.
ContextHospitals
Global: high-, middle-, and low-income country
Non-Hospital Settings
OutcomeStaff related safety culture outcomes and experiences that
are identified following a hospital based intervention to
improve safety culture.
Safety Culture Outcomes, Safety Climate Outcomes,
or
Patient Outcomes with no distinction of staff
outcomes or experiences.
Date rangePublished from 2000Published before 2000
Publication TypeResearch ArticleConference Abstracts, Conference Proceedings,
Grey Literature, Reports
LanguagesAll

Article review process

Search results will be entered to Endnote where duplicates will be removed. Titles and abstracts of remaining articles will be screened for inclusion by two reviewers in Covidence, a systematic review data management program. Disagreement will be resolved by discussion with a third reviewer. Those selected for full-text review will be assessed according to the inclusion and criteria for addition to the final sample, again by two reviewers and discussion with a third to resolve disagreements.

Data extraction and quality assessment

Data will be extracted from each article and organized into a matrix. The articles will be examined to determine if and how well they measure effect on or capture outcome experience of health care workers and management following safety culture interventions. Data will be organised according to author, year, sample size, sample characteristics, place of publication, study setting, study design, intervention structure, intervention content, intervention duration, outcomes measured, measurement instrument, and principal findings. Data from included articles will be assessed independently by two authors, and disagreements will be resolved by discussion until a consensus is reached. The mixed-methods appraisal tool (MMAT) will be used as a quality assessment tool, with two authors discussing and cross-checking quality scores4951. The Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias in randomised trials52 and non-randomised studies of interventions53 will be employed to verify bias.

Data synthesis and analysis

Synthesis will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute methodological guidance for mixed methods reviews, which recommends a convergent approach to synthesis and integration48 following the work of Hong et al.,50 and Sandelowski51. A convergent integrated approach, with simultaneous synthesis, is suitable as the review question can be answered by both quantitative and qualitative research designs, involves data transformation and allows reviewers to combine quantitative and qualitative data48. To answer the research questions ‘how is safety culture defined in studies with interventions that aim to enhance it.?’; ‘what effects do interventions to improve safety culture have on staff?’; ‘what intervention features, safety culture domains or other factors explain these effects?’, and ‘what staff outcomes and experiences are identified?’ a thematic analysis of staff outcomes will be simultaneously combined with data on measures and effects available in the evidence.

Study status

Preliminary searches and study selection process piloted. We are currently formally screening search results against eligibility criteria.

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VERSION 2 PUBLISHED 01 Jul 2022
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Finn M, Mellon L, Walsh A et al. ‘What effect do safety culture interventions have on health care workers in hospital settings?’ A systematic review of the international literature [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. HRB Open Res 2022, 5:48 (https://doi.org/10.12688/hrbopenres.13576.2)
NOTE: If applicable, it is important to ensure the information in square brackets after the title is included in all citations of this article.
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Current Reviewer Status: ?
Key to Reviewer Statuses VIEW
ApprovedThe paper is scientifically sound in its current form and only minor, if any, improvements are suggested
Approved with reservations A number of small changes, sometimes more significant revisions are required to address specific details and improve the papers academic merit.
Not approvedFundamental flaws in the paper seriously undermine the findings and conclusions
Version 2
VERSION 2
PUBLISHED 18 Nov 2022
Revised
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Reviewer Report 19 Jul 2023
Ward Schrooten, Department of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Flanders, Belgium 
Marlies Claesen, Department of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Flanders, Belgium 
Approved
VIEWS 25
The introduction provides different perspectives on the definition of safety culture and refers to the various domains of safety culture used in safety culture measurement tools. The focus of this systematic review is introduced.
The aims and objectives of ... Continue reading
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HOW TO CITE THIS REPORT
Schrooten W and Claesen M. Reviewer Report For: ‘What effect do safety culture interventions have on health care workers in hospital settings?’ A systematic review of the international literature [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. HRB Open Res 2022, 5:48 (https://doi.org/10.21956/hrbopenres.14928.r34743)
NOTE: it is important to ensure the information in square brackets after the title is included in all citations of this article.
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34
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Reviewer Report 24 Nov 2022
Laura Adamson, Department of Radiation Oncology, Sydney West Radiation Oncology Network, Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia 
Approved
VIEWS 34
No ... Continue reading
CITE
CITE
HOW TO CITE THIS REPORT
Adamson L. Reviewer Report For: ‘What effect do safety culture interventions have on health care workers in hospital settings?’ A systematic review of the international literature [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. HRB Open Res 2022, 5:48 (https://doi.org/10.21956/hrbopenres.14928.r33209)
NOTE: it is important to ensure the information in square brackets after the title is included in all citations of this article.
Version 1
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PUBLISHED 01 Jul 2022
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Reviewer Report 18 Oct 2022
Laura Adamson, Department of Radiation Oncology, Sydney West Radiation Oncology Network, Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia 
Approved with Reservations
VIEWS 37
Thank you for the opportunity to review this protocol to perform a mixed methods systematic review on healthcare worker staff outcomes of safety culture interventions.

The study protocol is clear. The rationale for investigating the gap in ... Continue reading
CITE
CITE
HOW TO CITE THIS REPORT
Adamson L. Reviewer Report For: ‘What effect do safety culture interventions have on health care workers in hospital settings?’ A systematic review of the international literature [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. HRB Open Res 2022, 5:48 (https://doi.org/10.21956/hrbopenres.14825.r33029)
NOTE: it is important to ensure the information in square brackets after the title is included in all citations of this article.
  • Author Response 21 Feb 2023
    Mairéad Finn, Graduate School of Healthcare Management, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland
    21 Feb 2023
    Author Response
    Thank you to both reviewers for the time and reflection taken to appraise this work. Their feedback greatly enhances the piece and we are grateful for the opportunity to add ... Continue reading
COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT
  • Author Response 21 Feb 2023
    Mairéad Finn, Graduate School of Healthcare Management, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland
    21 Feb 2023
    Author Response
    Thank you to both reviewers for the time and reflection taken to appraise this work. Their feedback greatly enhances the piece and we are grateful for the opportunity to add ... Continue reading
Views
54
Cite
Reviewer Report 22 Aug 2022
Jane K. O'Hara, NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, Bradford, UK 
Approved with Reservations
VIEWS 54
Thank you for the opportunity to review this article. I found it generally clear and well argued. Whilst there have been many reviews on general safety culture, and patient safety culture, this does seem to add to this already large ... Continue reading
CITE
CITE
HOW TO CITE THIS REPORT
O'Hara JK. Reviewer Report For: ‘What effect do safety culture interventions have on health care workers in hospital settings?’ A systematic review of the international literature [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. HRB Open Res 2022, 5:48 (https://doi.org/10.21956/hrbopenres.14825.r32559)
NOTE: it is important to ensure the information in square brackets after the title is included in all citations of this article.
  • Author Response 21 Feb 2023
    Mairéad Finn, Graduate School of Healthcare Management, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland
    21 Feb 2023
    Author Response
    Thank you to both reviewers for the time and reflection taken to appraise this work. Their feedback greatly enhances the piece and we are grateful for the opportunity to add ... Continue reading
COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT
  • Author Response 21 Feb 2023
    Mairéad Finn, Graduate School of Healthcare Management, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland
    21 Feb 2023
    Author Response
    Thank you to both reviewers for the time and reflection taken to appraise this work. Their feedback greatly enhances the piece and we are grateful for the opportunity to add ... Continue reading

Comments on this article Comments (0)

Version 2
VERSION 2 PUBLISHED 01 Jul 2022
Comment
Alongside their report, reviewers assign a status to the article:
Approved - the paper is scientifically sound in its current form and only minor, if any, improvements are suggested
Approved with reservations - A number of small changes, sometimes more significant revisions are required to address specific details and improve the papers academic merit.
Not approved - fundamental flaws in the paper seriously undermine the findings and conclusions

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