Strengthen safety culture in healthcare – a study of interventions integrating occupational health and safety with patient safety

Description

Health care is a complex system whose primary goal is to provide good and safe care. At the moment, one patient suffers a care injury in every ten cases of care, while employees have for many years raised the alarm about shortcomings in the work environment. Through a good safety culture, the conditions for a good working environment and patient safety would be strengthened. The evidence for the connections between work environment and patient safety is strong, but there is a lack of knowledge about how these areas can be integrated and strengthened. An important prerequisite is psychological safety.

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to increased knowledge about complex interventions that can strengthen both the occupational safety and health and patient safety culture within health care. The project consists of four sub-studies, two of which evaluate different aspects of a structured method for systematic and integrated occupational safety and health and patient safety management systems (SIOHPS). The project is called “SamSa” in Swedish and is implemented in two different local regions; Region Västmanland and Region Dalarna.