Successful thesis exam and granting the scientific award of the doctorate on: Influence of the introduction of a clinical Risk Management System (cRMS) on hospital staff with regard to the Safety climate

PhDr. Mag. Mohamed-Ali Ibrahim, Lead Auditorof the Austrian Standards Institute and TUV Austria

Abstract of the thesis

The safety climate in institutions of the health sector influences the degree of patient safety. One of the goals of introducing a clinical risk-management system (cRMS) is to raise the patient safety. In the presented study, judgements of the hospital staff on the basis of a safety culture index are determined and analysed, in order to investigate the effect of the introduction of an RMS from their point of view.

The research question is:

Is there a difference in safety climate based on a risk-management system, compared to the climate without such a management system?

It is to be determined whether the introduction of a clinical risk-management system contributes towards a positive change in the hospital staff’s judgement on safety climate. In other words, whether the safety climate of an institution with an RMS differs from that without an RMS.

Following the theoretical discussion, an empirical study is conducted using a questionnaire. For this purpose, an internationally validated tool is employed: the patient safety culture index (PaSKI). Two sample groups were questioned from two different hospitals, where the first one employs an RMS and the second one does not.

The analysis confirms that the two groups differ significantly from each other in almost all tested variables. This manifests itself in medium to large effect size. For the important variables, the group with RMS always shows higher values than the group without RMS. Staff using an RMS tended to evaluate patient safety more positive