Published in:
Open Access 01-12-2013 | Research article
Psychometric properties of the hospital survey on patient safety culture, HSOPSC,applied on a large Swedish health care sample
Published in: BMC Health Services Research | Issue 1/2013
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Background
A Swedish version of the USA Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality“Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture” (S-HSOPSC) wasdeveloped to be used in both hospitals and primary care. Two new dimensionswith two and four questions each were added as well as one outcome measure.This paper describes this Swedish version and an assessment of itspsychometric properties which were tested on a large sample of responsesfrom personnel in both hospital and primary care.
Methods
The questionnaire was mainly administered in web form and 84215 forms werereturned (response rate 60%) between 2009 and 2011. Eleven per cent of theresponses came from primary care workers and 46% from hospital care workers.The psychometric properties were analyzed using both the total sample andthe hospital and primary care subsamples by assessment of construct validityand internal consistency. Construct validity was assessed by confirmatory(CFA) and exploratory factor (EFA) analyses and internal consistency wasestablished by Cronbachs’s α.
Results
CFA of the total, hospital and primary care samples generally showed a goodfit while the EFA pointed towards a 9-factor model in all samples instead ofthe 14-dimension S-HSOPSC instrument. Internal consistency was acceptablewith Cronbach’s α values above 0.7 in a major part of thedimensions.
Conclusions
The S-HSOPSC, consisting of 14 dimensions, 48 items and 3 single-item outcomemeasures, is used both in hospitals and in primary care settings in Swedenfor different purposes. This version of the original American instrument hasacceptable construct validity and internal consistency when tested on largedatasets of first-time responders from both hospitals and primary carecentres. One common instrument for measurements of patient safety culture inboth hospitals and primary care settings is an advantage since it enablescomparisons between sectors and assessments of national patient safetyimprovement programs. Future research into this version of the instrumentincludes comparing results from patient safety culture measurements withother outcomes in relation to safety improvement strategies.