The relationship between registered nurses' perceptions of their work environment and their perceptions of patient safety culture

In today’s highly complex, fast-paced healthcare environment, and with a growing nursing shortage, ensuring a healthy work environment and creating a safer healthcare system have become issues of high visibility nationwide. Pressures from healthcare providers, clients and stakeholders to improving the nurses work environment and the patient safety culture are increasing daily. Logically, there is a relationship among the eight essential attributes that creates a magnet work environment and patient safety culture, but this relationship has not yet been studied. The more studies are done about this relationship, the more effective it can be in promoting a healthy work environment and establishing a culture of safety within an organization. Therefore, it is important to understand how these attributes interact and to develop a patient safety culture. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate these relationships in Northern Virginia magnet hospitals. In addition, this study explored the relationships between selected demographics (such as age, level of education, length of shift and years of experience in the current position) and patient safety culture using Donabedian’s (1980) theoretical framework, “Structure-Process-Outcome” for quality of care. A convenience sample of 500 registered nurses working in magnet hospitals was recruited from Northern Virginia region. 160 nurses returned the survey questionnaires.;Two instruments were used in this study. The Essentials of Magnetism (EOM) tool was used to measure the perceptions of the nurses on their work environment. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSPSC) instrument was used to measure perceptions of nurses on patient safety culture. The findings from this study indicate that the study instruments are reliable. There are significant relationships among the essentials of the work environment and patient safety culture. In addition, the multiple regression indicated that several attributes of EOM significantly predict the patient safety outcome measurement of the HSPSC. Study limitations, future researches, and implications of this research were discussed.