Achieving a climate for patient safety by focusing on relationships.
OBJECTIVE
Despite many initiatives, advances in patient safety remain uneven in part because poor relationships among health professionals have not been addressed. The purpose of this study was to determine whether relationships between health professionals contributed to a patient safety climate, after implementation of an intervention to improve inter-professional collaboration.


DESIGN/SETTING
This was a secondary analysis of data collected to evaluate the Interprofessional Model of Patient Care (IPMPC) at The Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada, which consists of five sites. A series of generalized estimating equation models were generated, accounting for the clustering of responses by site.


PARTICIPANTS
Thirteen health professionals including physicians, nurses, physiotherapists and others (n = 1896) completed anonymous surveys about 1 year after the IPMPC was introduced.


INTERVENTION
The IPMPC was implemented to improve interdisciplinary collaboration.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Reliable instruments were used to measure collaboration, respect, inter-professional conflict and patient safety climate.


RESULTS
Collaboration (β = 0.13; P = 0.002) and respect (β = 1.07; P = 0.03) were significant independent predictors of patient safety climate. Conflict was an independent and significant inverse predictor of patient safety climate (β = -0.29; P = 0.03), but did not moderate linkages between collaboration and patient safety climate or between respect and patient safety climate.


CONCLUSIONS
Through the IPMPC, all health professionals learned how to collaborate and build a patient safety climate, even in the presence of inter-professional conflict. Efforts by others to foster better work relationships may yield similar improvements in patient safety climate.
['Manojlovich|Milisa|M|', 'Kerr|Mickey|M|', 'Davies|Barbara|B|', 'Squires|Janet|J|', 'Mallick|Ranjeeta|R|', 'Rodger|Ginette L|GL|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D000367:Age Factors D000368:Aged D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel D003299:Cooperative Behavior D005260:Female D006801:Humans D007400:Interprofessional Relations D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D015279:Organizational Culture D010348:Patient Care Team D061214:Patient Safety D011787:Quality of Health Care D012737:Sex Factors D012959:Socioeconomic Factors D055815:Young Adult
patient safety climate inter-professional collaboration secondary analysis inter-professional conflict inter-professional relationships