Physicians' perceptions about issues in patient safety: A study of Ministry of Health hospitals in the Riyadh region of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Although delivery of healthcare services has improved significantly, the number of reported serious medical errors continues to rise throughout the world. For instance, 34,000 patients in the United Kingdom die every year because of medical errors (Hunt 2002:4). In Saudi Arabia, with a much smaller population base, the number of medical errors reported every year is around 8,000 (20% of complaints received by the Ministry of Health) (Alghamedi cited in Alharbi 2007; Basalamah 2006). This research aimed to determine the perceptions of physicians regarding the risk factors that undermine patient safety in the hospitals run by the Ministry of Health, in the Riyadh region. A cross-sectional survey, using self-administered questionnaires, was used for data collection. Cluster sampling was used to select ten hospitals in the Riyadh region. The questionnaires were distributed to 774 physicians working in ten randomly selected hospitals. The overall response rate was 61% (n=470), of which 449 questionnaires (58% response rate) contained complete information on key variables and were valid for analysis.