The Ministry of Health, represented by the Directorate General of Quality Assurance Centre launched today (Tuesday) the National Patient Culture Survey among healthcare workers and employees in health institutions with the presence of MoH’s director general of Quality Assurance Centre Dr. Qamra Al Sariri. Meanwhile, a webinar was conducted to highlight the national survey.

The national survey aims at determining patient safety culture among health sector workers, and reveals the aspects that require development and progress regarding patient safety culture in order to improve the quality of health services in the Sultanate.

The survey targets health workers of various medical, para-medical, and administrative staff to raise their awareness on patient safety, assess the status of the patient safety culture among healthcare workers, and identify strengths and areas for patient safety culture improvement, in addition to evaluating improvement–oriented action plans.

The survey is an online questionnaire focuses on six key aspects that are teamwork, administrative support, communication, adverse events reporting, patient safety, and information delivery.

Dr. Qamra Al Sariri pointed out that a number of studies have showed an association between a positive safety culture and healthcare service such as reduced infection rates, fewer readmissions, better surgical outcomes, reduced adverse events, and decreased mortality. Therefore, it is important to assess the level of patient safety culture among healthcare workers as it helps in determining strengths area of improvement to be studied and analyzed, consequently making the necessary improvements and recommendations to ensure a positive patient safety culture in line with international standards.

It should be noted that the launching of the national patient safety culture survey is part of September activities that the Sultanate announced it an annual national awareness month for Patient Safety.