Strategies for Improving Physician-patient Relationship in China Assessing Patient Safety Culture from the Perceptions of Physicians

Creating a better patient safety culture in hospitals has become a critical topic for providing quality medical services globally. In 2014, there were 115 thousand cases of medical disputes in China. Understanding physicians’ perceptions toward patient safety is a critical issue for hospitals to monitor safety situations for patients. This study aims to identify physicians’ attitudes toward patient safety via the investigation of Sexton et al. (2006)’s Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ), to provide implications for improving medical quality. Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to demonstrate the relationships among six patient safety culture dimensions. Regression analysis was subsequently conducted to realize the degree of influence among important dimensions. Physicians was asked to answer the SAQ in a tertiary hospital in China in 2017. The results of Pearson correlation analysis demonstrate that safety climate had strong and positive relationship with working conditions and teamwork climate, respectively. Similarly, regression results illustrated that working conditions, teamwork climate, and teamwork climate had noteworthy effects on safety climate. The examination of patient safety culture from the viewpoints of physicians provides a basis for hospital managers to monitor the medical quality and service for patients. Hospital managers need to pay more efforts to the essentially important elements of patient safety, such as working conditions, teamwork climate, and job satisfaction, to continuously improve physician-patient relationship.