Evaluation of surgical nurses' attitudes related to patient safety

This research has been planned descriptively to evaluate the attitudes of nurses, whowork in the surgical units, towards patients safety. Sample population included 231 surgical nurses were chosen with simple random sample method through 409 surgical nurses of the 4 hospitals in Tekirdağ and Çanakkale were collected by using personnel information form prepared in accordance with literatür and Safety Attitudes Questionnare (SAQ) developed Sexton et al. developed in 2006 by Baykal et al. adapted to Turkish in 2010 by. The data was analysed using SPSS 18.0 .Frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation, Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis and Spearman Correlation analysis were used for data analysis. The average score of safety attitudes of nurses' were 123,170 ± 24,076 and medium-level. The job satisfaction had the highest, the safety climate had the lowest scores within the subscales of SAQ. There is no statistically meaningful difference between the average scores of safety attitudes of staff according to ages, weekly working hours and job experience of staff. The average scores of safety attitudes of operating room (OR) nurses than nurses who work in inpatient surgical unit and surgical intensive care unit (ICU). The perception of management sub-scale's average scores of nurses aged between 18-30 were statistically higher than the scores of nurses between the ages of 31-40. The average scores of ''job satisfaction'' subscale of nurses who work more than 40 hours per week were statistically higher than the scores of nurses working less than 40 hours per week. The average scores of ''teamwork'' and ''safety climate'' sub-scale of OR nurses were higher than scores of nurses who work in surgical inpatient unit and intensive care unit. The average scores of ''perception of management'' of OR nurses were statistically higher than scores of surgical inpatient unit nurses. The average scores of ''stress recognition'' of surgical inpatient service nurses were the highest, it is followed by scores of OR nurses and surgical ICU nurses. Finally, the average score of safety attitudes of nurses' were medium level and their attitudes towards patient safety should be improved. Key words: Nursing, Surgical Units, Patient Safety