Patient Safety Competency Among Operating Room Nurses: Associations With Safety Attitudes, Systems Thinking and Burnout in a Multicentre Cross-Sectional Study.
Daoming Chen, Chenxi Li, Yubin Su and 4 others
PMID 42728794WHAT IT FOUND
Operating room nurses with less than five years of experience or temporary contracts reported lower patient safety competency.
Those who attended recent safety training scored higher. These are self-reported associations, not proof that training causes better performance.
Key findings
01Nurses with 5 or fewer years of operating room experience had significantly lower patient safety competency scores compared to those with over 20 years.
02Participation in patient safety training was associated with an 8.320-point higher patient safety competency score.
03Permanent staff nurses had higher patient safety competency scores than those on temporary contracts.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The cross-sectional design cannot prove that training or experience causes higher competency; nurses who feel more competent may be more likely to seek training. All measures were self-reported, which may be influenced by social desirability or confidence rather than actual skill. The sample was limited to tertiary hospitals in one Chinese province, so results may not apply to other settings. The number of hospitals was small, which limits the precision of estimates regarding organisational differences.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest and have nothing to report regarding funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that attending safety training automatically improves patient safety outcomes. The study shows an association with self-reported competency, not objective performance, and the training content and quality were not assessed.