Nurses’ and Surgeons’ Ratings of Hospital Culture of Safety Correlate to Complication Rates

Nurses’ and surgeons’ perceptions of organization safety culture were most closely related to that organization’s rates of serious complications involving bariatric surgery, reports a study in the February 2013 Annals of Surgery. Specifically, nurses’ perceptions of the organization’s overall safety culture and surgeons’ perceptions of operating room (OR) safety culture were the two survey answers most closely tied to rates of complications. If the nurse rated the organization “acceptable,” the organization was most likely to have a 4.0% complication rate; a rating of “very good” correlated to a complication rate of 2.5%, and “excellent” was tied to a 1.5% complication rate.