An exploratory study of staff perceptions of shift safety in the critical care unit and routinely available data on workforce, patient and organisational factors

Objectives

To explore: bedside professional reported (BPR) perceptions of safety in intensive care staff; and the relationships between BPR safety, staffing, patient and work environment characteristics.

Design An exploratory study of self-recorded staff perceptions of shift safety and routinely collected data.

Setting A large teaching hospital comprising 70 critical care beds.

Participants All clinical staff working in adult critical care.

Interventions Staff recorded whether their shift felt “safe, unsafe or very unsafe” for 29 consecutive days. We explored these perceptions and relationships between these and routine data on staffing, patient and environmental characteristics.

Outcome measures Relationships between BPR safety and staffing, patient and work environment characteristics.

Results 2836 BPR scores were recorded over 29 consecutive days (response rate 57.7%). Perceptions of safety varied between staff, including within the same shift. There was no corr...