Patients’ perception of safety in four hospitals in Tamaulipas, Mexico

Abstract

Objective: To determine the perceived patient safety related to health care during hospitalization. To identify the number of patients who report having suffered a clinical error and describe the patients’ experience with the clinical error.
Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study performed of patients who were hospitalized between August-November 2013 in four second-level hospitals.
Results: A total of 631 patients were surveyed. Regarding the errors suffered during the hospitalization, 7.9% of the patients reported having suffered a complication, 7.9% reported having an infection, 5.2% had an allergic reaction to medication and 5.1% had to undergo a second surgery. Regarding the patients’ responses about the experience with the error, only 4.8% of the patients reported having had experiencing clinical error in their management, 1.9% mentioned that they fully agreed that the error was solved quickly, 2.5% that the error was solved satisfactorily and 3.3% patients disagreed as they were not informed if steps would be taken to prevent the error from recurring.
Conclusions: To address safety culture in the hope of improving patient safety will continue to motivate nurse researchers and managers thus more research about patient perception is needed.