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Through a number of comprehensive reviews, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended that healthcare organizations develop safety cultures to align delivery system processes with the workforce requirements to improve patient outcomes. Until health systems can provide safer care environments, patients remain at risk for suboptimal care and adverse outcomes. Health science researchers have begun to explore how safety cultures might act as an essential system feature to improve organizational outcomes. Since safety cultures are established through modification in employee safety perspective and work behavior, human resource (HR) professionals need to contribute to this developing organizational domain. The IOM indicates individual employee behaviors cumulatively provide the primary antecedent for organizational safety and quality outcomes. Yet, many safety culture scholars indicate the concept is neither theoretically defined nor consistently applied and researched as the terms safety culture, safety climate, and safety attitude are interchangeably used to represent the same concept. As such, this paper examines the intersection of organizational culture and healthcare safety by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of safety culture, exploring the constructs for measurement, and assessing the current state of safety culture research. Safety culture draws from the theoretical perspectives of sociology (represented by normal accident theory), organizational psychology (represented by high reliability theory), and human factors (represented by the aviation framework). By understanding not only the origins but also the empirical safety culture research and the associated intervention initiatives, healthcare professionals can design appropriate HR strategies to address the system characteristics that adversely affect patient outcomes. Increased emphasis on human resource management research is particularly important to the development of safety cultures. This paper contributes to the existing healthcare literature by providing the first comprehensive critical analysis of the theory, research, and practice that comprise contemporary safety culture science.

Harnessing the power of knowledge management is important for minimizing accidents occurring at construction projects. Yet, knowledge management is a neglected dimension when developing safety culture in the construction industry. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a knowledge-based safety culture questionnaire and examine its validity and reliability in the Indian context.

A questionnaire survey was formulated after identifying 69 influencing factors from a thorough literature review. In total, 210 valid responses were obtained from key stakeholders operating in Indian construction industry. Reliability and validity of the measurement scale were examined by factor analysis and inter-item correlation test. Comparison of knowledge-based safety culture scores across several demographic profiles of the respondents was utilized for testing discriminant validity.

Results suggest that the new instrument appears to be a reliable, valid and sensitive instrument that will contribute in examining the effect of key factors that influence the importance of the knowledge dimension toward developing safety culture in the construction industry.

The measurement tool developed in this study focuses on considering the importance of knowledge management in enhancing safety culture of the construction industry. This instrument can be utilized to compare the level of safety culture among key stakeholders of construction projects. This paper can contribute to the promotion of safety theory in Indian construction industry and provide practical implications for construction enterprises when they engage in improving safety conditions in their organizations.

Safety in construction projects is essential and requires more attention towards minimizing the accident rate. Problems concerning awareness of safety risks, procedures and practices still exist in the industry, which indicate a shortfall in diffusion of safety-related knowledge in construction industry. Also, there is dearth of studies on knowledge management strategies to prevent reoccurrence of accidents and thereby improve safety culture in construction industry. This study attempts to unveil aspects of knowledge management that are ignored in considering safety culture and discern the differences in the perception of key stakeholders of construction industry. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify and measure knowledge-based safety culture elements.

In this paper, the focus is on the application of a reliable, valid and sensitive knowledge-based safety culture assessment tool on key stakeholders operational in construction industry. Research method adopted is a questionnaire-based survey to seek responses from industry professionals. A total of 199 responses were obtained from 106 different companies operational in Indian construction industry. Statistical analyses including ranking analysis, t-test, correlation analysis, and ANOVA test are utilized for comparing and identifying the differences in view of stakeholder's perceptions concerning workplace safety.

This study helps to identify and rank critical knowledge-based safety culture elements from the perspective of key stakeholders of construction industry. This contributes in identifying the most critical and neglected variables among the key stakeholders regarding aspects of safety culture. Also, the study shows the importance of knowledge dimension in developing overall safety culture in construction industry.

Results of this study offer valuable insight in enabling key stakeholders of construction industry to examine and enhance their safety performance. The implications of this study contribute new knowledge in assessing conditions that will improve worker safety in the construction industry. The paper should be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the area of occupational health and safety management.

Safety activities have been initiated in healthcare organizations in Taiwan, but little is known about the performance and trends of safety culture on a timely basis. This study aims to comprehensively review the articles that have conducted two worldwide patient safety culture instruments (HSPSC and SAQ) in Taiwan to provide the extent of existing knowledge about healthcare professionals' perception related to patient safety.

The Web of Science, Medline (Pubmed) and Embas were used as the database to search papers related to the patient safety culture in Taiwan from 2008 to June 30, 2019.

Twenty-four relative articles in total were found and further investigations confirmed that the regular assessment of patient safety culture among hospital staff is essentially important for healthcare organizations to reduce the rates of medical errors and malpractice. Moreover, the elements influencing patient safety culture may vary due to the difference in job positions, age, experience in organization and cultural settings.

The summary of findings enables healthcare administrators and practitioners to understand key components of patient safety culture for continuous improvement in medical quality.

Assessing the safety culture in healthcare organizations is a foundation to achieve excellent medical quality and service. The implications of this study could be useful for hospitals to establish a safer environment for patients.

The rapid changes that the healthcare services industry is undergoing pose a challenge to obtaining accurate measurements of the delivery of medical services to patients. Current Chinese measures of patient safety culture may not adequately capture how medical staff perceives the promotion of patient safety. This study aims to construct a valid and applicable patient safety culture instrument by re-estimating the Chinese version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) with medical staff in Taiwan.

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on data collected from a sample of 448 medical workers at a regional teaching hospital in Taiwan, and data from 804 participants at a medical center were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The distribution of the questions among the dimensions was different from that in the Chinese version of the SAQ.

The authors' results confirm that 3 correlated first-order factors, including 11 items, can be used to measure collaboration and safety, stress recognition and emotional exhaustion (EE). The authors' data suggest that the cooperation mechanism, patient safety promotion, stress management and emotional management are drivers of patient safety and should be prioritized when seeking to evaluate the perceptions of hospital staff toward patient safety culture in hospitals in Taiwan.

To improve the quality and safety of patient care, the measurement scale should be revisited and modified as the industry changes over time and to take account of cultural variation. The authors restructured the current Chinese version of the SAQ developed by the Joint Commission of Taiwan (JCT) to offer more precise measures that increase the sensitivity of the measurement of the level of care in items of patient safety and that serve as a diagnostic instrument to review patient safety management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational learning and patient safety culture in hospital pharmacy settings as determined by the learning organization survey short-form (LOS-27) and pharmacy survey on patient safety culture instruments, and to further explore how dimensions of organizational learning relate to dimensions of pharmacy patient safety culture.

This study is a cross-sectional study. Data were obtained from three public hospital pharmacies and three private hospital pharmacies in Kuwait. Partial least square structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

A total of 272 surveys (59.1 percent response rate) were completed and returned. The results indicated a significant positive relationship between organizational learning and patient safety culture in hospital pharmacy settings (path coefficient of 0.826, p-value <0.05 and R² of 0.683). Several dimensions of the organizational learning showed significant links to the various dimensions of the pharmacy patient safety culture. Specifically, training (TRN), management that reinforces learning (MRL) and supportive learning environment (SLE) had the strongest effects on the pharmacy patient safety culture dimensions. Moreover, these effects indicated that MRL, SLE and TRN were associated with improvements in most dimensions of pharmacy patient safety culture.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to assess the relationship between organizational learning, patient safety culture and their dimensions in hospital pharmacy settings.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factor structure of safety culture construct among engineering students at university context and to examine the measurement invariance of this instrument across different socio-demographic groups in a sample of engineering students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

An exploratory online questionnaire was completed by 770 undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students across the UAE. Data were analyzed using a diversified multi-group and a robust and sophisticated cross-validation testing strategy. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test factor structures identified in previous studies. Multi-group invariance testing was conducted to determine the extent to which factor structure is comparable across groups (i.e. gender, educational and experiential background).

Three-factor model was preferred for its parsimony. The results showed that the level of safety awareness and attitude is relatively satisfactory, whereas safety behaviour is inadequate. No significant difference was showed in multi-group invariance between demographic groups.

This research is a cross-sectional study and limited to the views of engineering students (informal group). The study would benefit from both informal and formal groups in assessing safety culture at university for a robust empirical evidence. The research highlights relevant implications for policy and program development, by pointing to the need to promote safety culture and mitigate safety-related accidents among engineering students.

This paper offers insight into benefit of understanding the level of safety culture among engineering students and extend knowledge of informal group involvement in safety-related accidents at university level.

The aims of this study are to (1) evaluate physicians and nurses' perspectives on patient safety culture amid the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) integrate the emotional exhaustion of physicians and nurses into an evaluation of patient safety culture to provide insights into appropriate implications for medical care.

Patient safety culture was assessed with the Chinese version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to validate the structure of the data (i.e. reliability and validity), and Pearson's correlation analysis was performed to identify relationships between safety-related dimensions.

Safety climate was strongly associated with working conditions and teamwork climate. In addition, working conditions was highly correlated with perceptions of management and job satisfaction, respectively. It is worth noting that the stress and emotional exhaustion of the physicians and nurses during this epidemic were high and needed attention.

For healthcare managers and practitioners, team-building activities, power of public opinions, IoT-focused service, and Employee Assistance Programs are important implications for inspiring the patient safety-oriented culture during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper considers the role of emotional state into patient safety instrument, a much less understood but equally important dimension in the field of patient safety.

The purpose of this paper is to address the primary research question, which is what is the relationship between the project manager’s (PM) possession of the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and the level of the safety culture present in the construction project the PM manages.

The research was based on a survey of a purposive sample, 109 engineers and first-line supervisors worked in 23 construction projects of which ten were led by PMP-certified PMs and 13 were led by PMs lacking PMP certification. Each PM completed a demographic questionnaire for the predictor variables of PMP certification controlled for age and experience. To assess the criterion variable of safety culture total score, engineers and first-line supervisors working in the same project completed the questionnaire of safety culture values and practices.

Results of this study indicated the level of safety culture was significantly different, and improved, for engineers and first-line supervisors who work under PMs with PMP certification compared to the level of safety culture in projects managed by PMs with no PMP certification. Although alignment of safety culture perceptions among different levels in the organization helps to achieve a positive safety culture, the role of the PM in transferring, implementing and maintaining the safety culture in the construction project is fundamental, particularly in small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

This study addressed the role of the PMs managerial skills in the safety performance of Saudi Arabian SMEs. The principal finding was that PMs with managerial skills perform better regarding safety performance in SME construction projects than PMs lacking managerial skills. The primary recommendation is that leaders in construction projects must carefully evaluate engineers’ managerial skills before hiring the individuals as PMs. A PM’s promotion model developed in this study provides a suitable framework and business process component for construction leaders seeking to maintain safety performance successfully.

The Sexton et al.’s (2006) safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) has been widely used to assess staff’s attitudes towards patient safety in healthcare organizations. However, to date there have been few studies that discuss the perceptions of patient safety both from hospital staff and upper management. The purpose of this paper is to improve and to develop better strategies regarding patient safety in healthcare organizations.

The Chinese version of SAQ based on the Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation is used to evaluate the perceptions of hospital staff. The current study then lies in applying importance-performance analysis technique to identify the major strengths and weaknesses of the safety culture.

The results show that teamwork climate, safety climate, job satisfaction, stress recognition and working conditions are major strengths and should be maintained in order to provide a better patient safety culture. On the contrary, perceptions of management and hospital handoffs and transitions are important weaknesses and should be improved immediately.

The research is restricted in generalizability. The assessment of hospital staff in patient safety culture is physicians and registered nurses. It would be interesting to further evaluate other staff’s (e.g. technicians, pharmacists and others) opinions regarding patient safety culture in the hospital.

Few studies have clearly evaluated the perceptions of healthcare organization management regarding patient safety culture. Healthcare managers enable to take more effective actions to improve the level of patient safety by investigating key characteristics (either strengths or weaknesses) that healthcare organizations should focus on.