Safety surveys quality measured

Colla, J.B., Bracken, A.C., Kinney, L.M. and Weeks, W.B. 2005. Measuring patient safety chmate A review of surveys. Quality Safety in Health Care, 14, 364-6. 

For economic outcomes, we can use pharmacoecon-omy as the main tool. " There is a great variety of clinical indicators that we can relate to drugs efficacy and safety. These clinical indicators, obtained with designs from clinical epidemiology (observational and experimental),are excellent to measure clinical outcomes. To obtain indicators for humanistic outcomes, such as satisfaction and quality of life, we have different tools, such as surveys, and different qualitative research methods (interviews, focus groups, etc.). " ... 

By the long term effect we mean the safety performance over a long period of time coupled with prosperity on the basis of measures such as production, service, productivity and quality. Related to safety we would like to asess accidents and successful interventions together with a survey of risk perceptions in the organizations. If there is a problem to measure successful intervention, the level of accidents is the flip side and could be explored. 

While the focus of almost all studies included in this chapter was the adaptation of a patient safety cUmate measure from the USAto their own national and healthcare contexts, maity of the questions we will have to answer in future might be better addressed at a cross-national level. At the level of the survey instmment this would require a certain amount of consistency regarding the use of terminology and the addition or removal of items - a minimal shared item set. Taking cross-national similarities and differences into account (especially with regard to internal consistencies of the various safety climate dimensions) might help to improve further the overall quality of the HSPSC and to further our understanding of factors at the level of healthcare systems that may have a considerable impact on safety climate. 

Activity measures monitor the performance of activities that are needed to reach key objectives. They reflect focused safety issues such as the number of hazard surveys conducted, the number of employees trained in lockout/tagout procedures, etc. These measures, sometimes called leading indicators, typically demonstrate the state of work-in-progress in terms of cost, quality, and time. Often they are found in official internal reports and are likely to be tracked by directors, managers, and supervisors. Leading indicators are measures of the activity prior to the outcome. 

Perception surveys have also been used to provide measurements of the quality of safety management systems in place. Through an interview system or the completion of surveys, they provide management with a picture of what employees at various levels of responsibility think about the management of safety in the organization. Perception surveys are outcome surveys in that the perceptions people have of how safety is managed derive from their observations of what got done or didn t get done with respect to the safety system elements covered in the interview or questionnaire process. 

Factor analysis and extensive focus-group work indicates that the survey measures fundamental components of the management system, including management s demonstration of commitment to safety education and knowledge of the workforce quality of the safety supervisory process and employee involvement and commitmenL... 

Certain other healthcare-related instruments fall between a true diagnostic instrument and an opinion survey. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality s (AHRQ s) Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture is an example, It measures some aspects of team functioning and safety climate it does not measure the dimensions of organizational culture known to predict performance, AHRQ maintains a database of other hospitals that have used the survey as a benchmark, but the survey has not been shown to have predictive validity,... 

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