Affiliations 

  • 1 Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Department of Pharmacy Practice and Development, Malacca State Pharmaceutical Services Division, Ayer Keroh, Malacca, Malaysia
  • 2 Community Health Research Cluster, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), Kampus Gong Badak, Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia
  • 3 Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Department of Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences, Communities of Research, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
BMJ Open, 2015 Nov 26;5(11):e008889.
PMID: 26610761 DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008889

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To assess the safety attitudes of pharmacists, provide a profile of their domains of safety attitude and correlate their attitudes with self-reported rates of medication errors.
DESIGN: A cross-sectional study utilising the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ).
SETTING: 3 public hospitals and 27 health clinics.
PARTICIPANTS: 117 pharmacists.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Safety culture mean scores, variation in scores across working units and between hospitals versus health clinics, predictors of safety culture, and medication errors and their correlation.
RESULTS: Response rate was 83.6% (117 valid questionnaires returned). Stress recognition (73.0±20.4) and working condition (54.8±17.4) received the highest and lowest mean scores, respectively. Pharmacists exhibited positive attitudes towards: stress recognition (58.1%), job satisfaction (46.2%), teamwork climate (38.5%), safety climate (33.3%), perception of management (29.9%) and working condition (15.4%). With the exception of stress recognition, those who worked in health clinics scored higher than those in hospitals (p<0.05) and higher scores (overall score as well as score for each domain except for stress recognition) correlated negatively with reported number of medication errors. Conversely, those working in hospital (versus health clinic) were 8.9 times more likely (p<0.01) to report a medication error (OR 8.9, CI 3.08 to 25.7). As stress recognition increased, the number of medication errors reported increased (p=0.023). Years of work experience (p=0.017) influenced the number of medication errors reported. For every additional year of work experience, pharmacists were 0.87 times less likely to report a medication error (OR 0.87, CI 0.78 to 0.98).
CONCLUSIONS: A minority (20.5%) of the pharmacists working in hospitals and health clinics was in agreement with the overall SAQ questions and scales. Pharmacists in outpatient and ambulatory units and those in health clinics had better perceptions of safety culture. As perceptions improved, the number of medication errors reported decreased. Group-specific interventions that target specific domains are necessary to improve the safety culture.
Study site: Klinik kesihatan, hospitals, Malaysia

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.