The effects of ethical climate perception on patient safety culture: the case of Elaziğ

Interest in variety and quality in healthcare provision increases as patients learn their rights. The concept of patient safety is one of the main factors of quality and means the precautions taken by the healthcare institution and personnel to prevent harm to the patients. Healthcare personnel usually cannot agree on based on what they should evaluate various factors of benefits and harms because they are not always concrete. This conflict can be eliminated by the ethical values adopted by institutions and healthcare personnel. Based on this opinion, the effect of healthcare personnel's ethical climate perceptions on patient safety culture was selected as the subject of this study. The fact that no studies were found to analyze the interaction between these two variables was considered to be an indicator of the originality of this study. This study mainaims to determine the effect of ethical climate perception on patient safety through the evaluations of health workers. The study population consists of the personnel of all hospitals in the city of Elazığ. There are 8 hospitals in Elazığ: 4 public and 4 private hospitals. A total of 3,320 personnel are employed in these hospitals. The data were collected between 05.01.2017 and 06.30.2017 using questionnaires. The ethical climate and patient safety scales are 5-point Likert type scales. A total of 346 questionnaires were assessed. The study findings showed that the participants' ethical climate perception was high (3.43; sd=0.85), and patient safety culture perception was at medium level (3.18; sd=0.54). Ethical climate perception was found to have a positive medium-level effect on patient safety culture. Ethical climate may be effective at a rate of 28% on patient safety [r=0.528; r 2=0.279; p<0.001].