Aim: To examine variations in the safety climate reported by nurses in Slovak hospitals and to analyse the association between dimensions of the patient safety climate and demographic and organisational factors.
Background: A deeper understanding of how safety climate varies across hospitals can be useful in determining areas with a potential for improvement. Staffing and non-punitive response to errors were identified in recent research syntheses as the weakest dimensions of safety climate that require strengthening.
Methods: The sample consisted of 1,429 nurses working in public and private hospitals in Slovakia. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire was used for data collection, and descriptive analysis was carried out to examine relationships between variables.
Results: Nurses working in general private hospitals with a bed capacity of less than 500 beds were more positive about their hospital safety climate than other nurses working in differently organised hospitals. The lowest number of positive responses was scored in the domain of 'Non-Punitive Response to Error'. This result came from a blame-free error-reporting atmosphere.
Conclusions: Nurses perceived a higher level of patient safety when they had experienced better sharing of information on event reporting and had better learning opportunities.
Implications for nursing management: The results revealed strengths and weaknesses of the patient safety climate in the network of Slovak hospitals from the perspective of nurses working in these hospitals. This knowledge can enable nurse managers to instigate supportive strategies for just reporting, and learning from events, within an enhanced safety culture.
Keywords: acute care; health and safety; nursing; patient safety; quantitative methods.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.