Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2022

Publication Title

Journal of Nursing Management

Volume

30

Issue

6

Pages

1-10

Abstract

The aim of this study is to describe safety culture as experienced by medical–surgical nurse leaders.BackgroundSafety culture remains a barrier in safer patient care. Nurse leaders play an important role in creating and supporting a safety culture.MethodsWe used an inductive qualitative descriptive study using semistructured interviews, document review and observations in a Midwestern community hospital in the United States.ResultsResults of the study are as follows: making sure nurses are keeping patients safe, making sure nurses have nursing interventions in place, expecting nurses to stop unsafe acts or escalate when they feel uncomfortable, making sure nurses have what they need to provide safe care, organization prioritizes patient safety and making sure nurses are learning and growing emerged as themes describing safety culture.ConclusionsNurse leaders made sure patients were safe by making sure everyone was doing their best to provide safe care. Insufficient time, too many priorities, insufficient resources, poor physician behaviours and lack of respect for their role emerged as barriers to leading a safety culture.Implications for Nursing ManagementOrganizations must remove barriers for nurse leaders to develop and lead a safety culture. Nurse leaders must learn to advocate successfully for safe nursing care and professional work environments.

Comments

© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Nursing Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13775

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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