| Summary: | Patient safety, as key aspect of the quality in health care, has acquired a major importance over the last few years. The development of a safety culture which minimizes the occurrence of errors, facilitates learning and promotes a continuous improvement is considered a priority. This study aimed to identify the safety culture in medical-surgical inpatient services in hospitals from Portugal. A quantitative, descriptive, correlational and cross-sectional study was conducted. Direct care professionals from 66 inpatient services of four hospitals have participated in the study. We used the Portuguese version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (Sorra, Nieva, 2004). It is composed of 12 dimensions and 42 items scored from 1 to 5, which assess health care professionals' perception of patient safety culture. From an initial sample of 1577 nurses, 472 physicians and 796 operational assistants, a response rate of 50.7% (800), 16.1% (76) and 29.4% (234), respectively, was obtained. The mean age was 38.09 years, professional experience of 13.8 years and length of service of 9.07 years. The lowest mean scores of patient safety were found in "overall grade on patient safety" (2.35), "number of events over the past year" (1.14), "non-punitive response to error" (2.75) and "staffing" (3.07). The highest mean scores were found in "teamwork" (3.91) and "organizational learning and continuous improvement" (3.83). These findings show the need for an intervention so improve safety.
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