The Impact of a National Accreditation Program on Patient Safety Culture in a Tertiary Hospital: Pre-and Post-Evaluation Study

Abstract

Introduction:The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Saudi national accreditation programon patient safety culture in a secondary-tertiary public hospital in Saudi Arabia.Methods:Three hundred healthprofessionals were randomly selected to participate in a survey. The survey was used in three phases: baseline, beforeaccreditation, and after accreditation. Primary and secondary outcome measures were teamwork within hospital units,feedback and communication about errors, hospital handoffs and transitions, overall perceptions of safety, frequencyof event reporting, and perception of patient safety grade.Results:The survey response rate was 100%. A statisticallysignificant impact of accreditation was found for teamwork within hospital units, feedback and communication abouterrors, and hospital handoffs and transitions (p¼0.002, 0.009, and 0.010, respectively). Ordinal logistic regressionconfirmed that the accreditation program had a significant effect on overall perceptions of safety (odds ratio [OR][1.42–13.56],p¼0.010), frequency of event reporting (OR [0.91–7.96],p¼0.073), and staff awareness of grading safetyculture (OR [0.02–0.70]) and reporting behavior (OR 0.10 [0.03–0.37]).Conclusion:The Saudi national accreditationprogram had a significant positive impact on some patient safety culture dimensions and outcomes. These findingsprovide local empirical evidence on the benefits of implementing national accreditation programs. Further researchon a larger scale is highly recommended