Do Safety Culture Scores in Nursing Homes Depend on Job Role and Ownership? Results from a National Survey.

Banaszak ‐ Holl, Jane; Reichert, Heidi; Todd Greene, M.; Mody, Lona; Wald, Heidi L.; Crnich, Christopher; McNamara, Sara E.; Meddings, Jennifer

Objectives To identify facility- and individual-level predictors of nursing home safety culture. Design Cross-sectional survey of individuals within facilities. Setting Nursing homes participating in the national Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Safety Program for Long-Term Care: Healthcare-Associated Infections/Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections Project. Participants Responding nursing home staff (N = 14,177) from 170 (81%) of 210 participating facilities. Measurements Staff responses to the Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture ( NHSOPS), focused on five domains (teamwork, training and skills, communication openness, supervisor expectations, organizational learning) and individual respondent characteristics (occupation, tenure, hours worked), were merged with data on facility characteristics (from the Certification and Survey Provider Enhanced Reporting): ownership, chain membership, percentage residents on Medicare, bed size. Data were analyzed using multivariate hierarchical models. Results Nursing assistants rated all domains worse than administrators did ( P < .001), with the largest differences for communication openness (24.3 points), teamwork (17.4 points), and supervisor expectations (16.1 points). Clinical staff rated all domains worse than administrators. Nonprofit ownership was associated with worse training and skills (by 6.0 points, P =.04) and communication openness (7.3 points, P =.004), and nonprofit and chain ownership were associated with worse supervisor expectations (5.2 points, P =.001 and 3.2 points, P =.03, respectively) and organizational learning (5.6 points, P =.009 and 4.2 points, P = .03). The percentage of variation in safety culture attributable to facility characteristics was less than 22%, with ownership having the strongest effect. Conclusion Perceptions of safety culture vary widely among nursing home staff, with administrators consistently perceiving better safety culture than clinical staff who spend more time with residents. Reporting safety culture scores according to occupation may be more important than facility-level scores alone to describe and assess barriers, facilitators, and changes in safety culture.

UNITED States; NURSING care facilities; OCCUPATIONAL roles; AMERICAN business enterprises; NURSING home employees; TEAMS in the workplace; EMPLOYEE training; JOB skills; NURSES' aides; ATTITUDE (Psychology); SAFETY; COMMUNICATION; CORPORATE culture; HEALTH facility administration; HEALTH services administrators; MEDICAL personnel; MULTIVARIATE analysis; NONPROFIT organizations; PERSONNEL management; PROBABILITY theory; SUPERVISION of employees; CROSS-sectional method; DESCRIPTIVE statistics

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2017, Vol 65, Issue 10, p2244

0002-8614

Academic Journal

10.1111/jgs.15030