ABSTRACT
Hofman and Mark (2006) investigated the relationship between safety climate and medication errors in hospitals. ey examined nurse back injury rates and needle sticks as rule-based incidents, medication errors (Kohn, Corrigan, and Donaldson 1999; Bogner 1994) and urinary tract infections as more complex outcomes, and patient perceptions, including patient satisfaction and perceptions of nurse responsiveness. Regarding medication errors, they dened errors as those that resulted in some harm. ey hypothesized that positive outcomes of these indicators would be correlated with a strong safety climate, which was measured using nine items from the Zohar (1980) measure of safety climate as revised by Mueller et al. (1999) coupled with 13 items from the Rybowiak et al. (1999) Error Orientation Scale. ey found that the overall safety climate signicantly predicted the rate of nurse back injuries, medication errors, and urinary tract infections, but not needle sticks. ey also studied the role of patient treatment complexity using a 14-item scale assessing patient complexity. ey found that the need for a positive safety climate increased as patient problems became more complex. e data suggested a two-factor solution. e rst factor focused on the degree to which learning occurs from errors, while the second factor focused on the openness and communication regarding errors.
