Saudi Arabian ICU safety culture and nurses’ attitudes

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine nurses’ attitudes towards safety culture in six Saudi Arabian intensive care units (ICUs).

Design/methodology/approach

The study is descriptive with a cross-sectional design. The Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ)-ICU version was distributed and 216 completed questionnaires were returned.

Findings

The findings provide a basis for further research on Saudi Arabian ICU safety culture. This study showed that the SAQ-ICU can be used to measure safety climate to identify areas for improvement according to nurse attitudes and perceptions. Findings indicate that ICU safety culture is an important issue that hospital managers should prioritise.

Practical implications

The SAQ-ICU questionnaire, used to measure safety climate in Saudi Arabian ICUs, identifies service strengths and improvement areas according to attitudes and perceptions.

Originality/value

To the knowledge, this is the first study to use SAQ to examine nurses’ safety culture attitudes in Saudi Arabian ICUs. The present findings provide a baseline and further details about Saudi Arabian ICU safety. Study participants represented nine nationalities, indicating the nursing workforce's diversity, which is expected to continue in the future. Such a nursing cultural heterogeneity calls for further studies to examine and evaluate attitudes and values to improve ICU safety culture.

Citation

S. Alayed, A., Lööf, H. and Johansson, U.-B. (2014), "Saudi Arabian ICU safety culture and nurses’ attitudes", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 27 No. 7, pp. 581-593. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-04-2013-0042