Assessing Compliance and Attitude to patient safety goal of patient identification among nurses: A cross-sectional observational survey

Abstract: Background: Patient identification is an important patient safety goal, healthcare providers have primary responsibility for verifying a patient's identity appropriately before intended interventions in the hospital. It is important for the hospital management team to develop and ensure the practice of patient identification policy. Objective:  To assess knowledge, attitude, and compliance to patient safety goal of patient identification Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted among 231 staff nurses of inpatient departments using random sampling at a tertiary hospital. The staff nurses were assessed for knowledge, attitude, and practices on patient safety of right patient identification using a knowledge-based questionnaire, structured validated questionnaire to measure attitude towards patient safety, and observational checklist for compliance to patient identification in practice Results: More than 50 percent of the nurses had a positive attitude towards reporting, acknowledging and dealing with mistakes, and concentrating on causes that could result in improving patient safety. Majority believed, management provided fair treatment for reporting but were more inclined and invested towards meeting targets of the organization. The compliance with all the identification practices was more than 80% with few areas of improvement identified for a compliance rate of less than 90%. Conclusion: Patient identification practices require special attention in health care delivery to avoid misleading errors and harm. It is thereby important to measure compliance and attitude of HCP at regular intervals to improve reporting and devising strategies. The compliance rate can be further improved by using strategies like standardizing approaches, provision of clear protocol, training, and patient education, and most importantly creating a culture of reporting and demonstrating management's inclination towards quality assurance