Patient safety walk-around: An analysis of hospital staff's perception, attitude and behavior toward patient concerns

Purpose. To analyze staff members' perception, attitude, and behavior toward patient safety concerns in the hospital, through a Walk-Around mechanism. Methods. The study was conducted from April to December 2003. A total of 86 staff members in 33 hospital departments were interviewed. Semi-structured questionnaires with interviews were employed in the study. Results. Staff perception is a moderate factor affecting patients' safety. According to our results, we believe that patient safety could be improved by high participation of the supervisors (97.7%). Negative attitude affects staff's intention to report misconduct even when it occurs (84.9%). Staff's behavior is negative to the consequences. Even though the staff is willing to participate in improving patient safety, they are still reluctant to report the incident because of uncertainty of the consequences (41.9%). Perception, attitude and behavior are significantly corelated with each other. The misconduct events were categorized into operation procedure (49%), human error (26%), administration (16%), and equipment (9%) using Vincen's model. Conclusions. Through the Walk-Around approach, the staff's perception, attitude and behavior were better understood and the patient safety problems have been identified for future improvement.