Assessing the safety climate in operating rooms: The case of healthcare organizations in Mexico

The treatment of patients may be regarded as a complex process involving, inter alia, sophisticated technology, medicine, diverse patients, multiple work processes, and various professional disciplines. System failures may include sound alike drugs, poorly designed devices and equipment, poor teamwork and communication, human error, etc. Given this, patient safety has become a priority in recent years. The chapter presents the results of the 'safety climate' in operating rooms (ORs) for the case of four healthcare organizations in Mexico. The approach has been the adoption of the 'safety attitude questionnaires' (SAQ) that have been developed for patient safety research and practice. The results show that the smaller healthcare organization appears to have a better attitude to patient safety than the biggest hospital considered in the study. Further statistical analysis is being undertaken and the results will be reported in the future.