Saad, Shahzuwaty
(2015)
A study on safety culture : the perception and variation among the emergency medical services in Kelantan.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
Introduction: In any industry, most safety management is about minimizing accidents
to workers, although some sectors such as transportation, nuclear power generation or
food production, the public is also at risk. However, in healthcare industry it is not only
patients who are injured, staff can be affected too. The healthcare providers are
regularly exposed to hazards such as verbal and physical assaults by both colleagues
and patients. These health and safety risks suggest that the health care work
environment is a potentially unsafe workplace that negatively impacts health care
providers. Neal and Griffin (2004) had explained in their study that safety climate do
influence worker’s knowledge and motivation, which in turns impacts on their safety
behaviors and finally on safety outcomes. The aim of this study was to measure the
Emergency Medical Services safety culture. To date, no nationwide safety survey has
been conducted in Malaysia on Emergency Medical Services personnel. It also can
make a benchmark result against international data which have been widely assessed in
United States of America, United Kingdom and some ASEAN countries and at the
same time can guide a unit-based, integrated and risk management strategy.
Method: We conducted across-sectional study involving 10 hospitals in Kelantan that
offer Emergency Medical Services and it took fourteen months period. We
administered a Malay version of EMS Safety Attitude Questionnaire (EMS-SAQ), a
survey instrument measuring dimension of workplace safety culture. All Emergency
Medical Team (EMT) staff in Emergency Department at the time of data collection
were included in the study. Those were doctors, paramedics, staff nurses, medical
assistants, attendants and drivers. We determined the variation in safety culture score in
all the institutions and also the association between socio demographic factors and level
of safety culture practice among EMS in Kelantan.
Results: We received 319 completed surveys from 10 hospitals in Kelantan. The
majority of respondent were male (55.8%) with mean age of respondent was 35.2 year
old. Majority of the respondents were Malays (93.7%) and predominantly staff nurse
and medical assistant followed by doctors. Mean years of services in EMS was 10.9
years. There was wide variation in safety culture score across the EMS agencies in
Kelantan but not statistically significant in term of safety culture score between
university hospital and public tertiary hospital in Kelantan and safety culture score
between hospitals with and without Emergency physician in each safety culture domain
that have been examined.
Conclusion: Patient safety is an important healthcare issue in all countries and should
be a continuous process. It should be a top strategic priority for EMS as a frontline
staff. The results in this study have shown that within same state, there were variations
in perception on safety culture among the Emergency Medical Services in Kelantan.
However, for a better result, the involvement of other healthcare workers or emergency
department staff from other hospital throughout Malaysia is needed for a larger study to
ensure a more comprehensive data.
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