Safety culture in the home care (SATURN)

Safety culture is a key factor for improving healthcare safety and quality. It is an essential component of a healthy work environment that enables staff to deliver high-quality and safe health care. Studies assessing safety culture/climate in the home care setting are very scarce. To the best of our knowledge no instrument exists that was adapted and validated specifically for the home care setting to measure safety culture/climate. Thus, the purpose of this study is to adapt a suitable safety climate instrument to the home care setting in the French-speaking region of Switzerland and examine its psychometric properties. By providing a culturally adapted and tested instrument, we expect to enable reliable and valid measurements of safety culture/climate in the home care setting. Measuring the safety culture/climate will allow the evaluation of patient safety interventions, identify areas for improvement, track changes over time and conduct internal and external benchmarking as an opportunity for learning and collaboration. This is in line with the objectives of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, which seek to foster a culture of safety within healthcare institutions.