Assessment of patient safety in six governmental hospitals in Kuwait

Background: Patient safety is defined by Institute of Medicine as “freedom from unnecessary or potential harm associated with health care”. Patient safety practice refers to “processes or structures which, when applied, reduce the probability of adverse events resulting from exposure to the health-care system across a range of diseases and procedures”. Objectives: To ensure that the examined hospitals and equipments are sufficient to deliver safe, acceptable quality care and to recognizing the high risk care processes inside the examined hospitals. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used in the present study. The study was carried out on 6 governmental hospitals. The following departments were examined in every hospital against the requirements of quality patient safety (surgery, internal medicine, ER, laboratory, radiology and pharmacy). Conclusions: there was statistical significance difference in departmental compliance with criteria of Patient Safety and Quality Improvement, it was obviously found that there was significant difference as regards compliance with communication at the different departments of the studied hospitals and it was shown that there were significant differences between the studied hospitals regarding all items of high risk care processes. This study found significant differences among the studied hospitals in compliance regarding all items of Leadership, all items of facility safety. Regarding Occupational Safety & Health; the study found that there was no significant difference regarding all items of Occupational Safety & Health considering that all items were of low compliance.