| dc.description.translatedabstract | Background: Patient safety is of major concern in advanced health systems. The organizational culture is widely considered to contribute to the improvement of the patient safety but no research has been done yet in Greece for its evaluation in high volume and high risk departments such as the Emergency Departments.
Aim: To investigate the safety attitudes of healthcare professionals in relation to their level of emotional intelligence in Emergency Departments of public hospitals in the region of Epirus.
Sample and Method: The sample consisted of all health care professionals in five public Emergency Departments of Epirus who were called to answer a self-administered and anonymous questionnaire the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire and the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS). The statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS version 21.0.
Results: One hundred and sixty-nine questionnaires were returned, of which one hundred forty-two were fully completed, the majority of health professionals were women (53.6%), permanent staff (52.9%), junior doctors (46.1%) and nurses ( 38.3%). Mean age of the sample was 37.85 years (SD = 7.79), total working experience in the ED was 6,9 years (SD = 6.64), while the overall working experience was 12.15 years (SD = 8.78). The overall safety climate was not deemed positive (mean: teamwork climate = 62.27, safety climate = 54.16, job satisfaction = 64.43, stress recognition = 67.41, perceptions of management = 43.26, working conditions = 53.36). Satisfactory is the level of emotional intelligence with average variation from 5.5 to 5.9.The level of emotional intelligence was deemed satisfactory with variation in mean score from 5.5 to 5.9. Also positive correlation was observed between higher prices of emotional intelligence and higher scores in all factors of the SAQ with the exception of the recognition of stress . Statistically significant differences in dimensions for both questionnaires were observed regarding gender, age, profession, shift, work status and job selection in the ED. No differences were observed for the SAQ on the level of education, former experience in another hospital or ED, while the WLEIS on the overall work experience and the hospital.
Conclusions: The overall climate of security is not deemed satisfactory. Organized efforts of administration at national and hospital level for strengthening individual factors deemed necessary for the safety of the patient. Also orientation in intervention policies to strengthen parameters of emotional intelligence based in professional qualification and seniority. Further future research is considered necessary in the particular field. | el_GR |
