Background

Very little research and practical efforts have been undertaken in public sector hospitals of Pakistan to promote error reporting and patient safety culture. Nurses in the country are key informants about the climate of error reporting and patient safety standards across wards in the hospital settings.

Methods

A questionnaire based on the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture has been used to measure patient safety culture across 18 different wards in two public sector hospitals of Pakistan. Descriptive statistics have been used to analyze the perceptions of 309 nurse practitioners.

Results

Results show that more than 80% of nurses felt that their ward did not respond to reported errors and that excessive workload interfered in their ability to practice patient safety. Similarly, more than 70% of the nurses felt they were not supported for reporting errors and that their ward placed blame on them for reporting. An overwhelming majority of nurses felt that patient safety standards and error reporting were unfavorable across high-turnover wards like the Emergency, Gynecology and Maternity, General Medicine, Cardiology, Surgery, Nephrology, and Orthopedics wards.

Conclusion

Results imply that public hospitals, ward administrators, and health governing bodies in the country must take initiatives to introduce and monitor patient safety and error reporting systems in a more systematic and stringent manner.