This study showed that patient safety culture in Dutch primary care professions on average is perceived positively. Also, it revealed variety between professions, indicating that a customized approach per profession group might contribute to successful implementation of safety strategies.

These studies in general practice provide a first understanding of improvement strategies and their effect in primary care. As the level of evidence was low, no clear preference can be determined. Further research is needed to help practices make an informed choice for an intervention.

Educating staff and facilitating discussion about patient safety culture in their own practice leads to increased reporting of incidents. It is beneficial to invest in a team-wise effort to improve patient safety.

BackgroundPatient safety has been a priority in primary healthcare in the last years. The prevailing culture is seen as an important condition for patient safety in practice and several tools to measure patient safety culture have therefore been developed. Although Dutch primary care consists of different professions, such as general practice, dental care, dietetics, physiotherapy and midwifery, a safety culture questionnaire was only available for general practices. The purpose of this study was to modify and validate this existing questionnaire to a generic questionnaire for all professions in Dutch primary care.MethodsA validated Dutch questionnaire for general practices was modified to make it usable for all Dutch primary care professions. Subsequently, this questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 2400 practices from eleven primary care professions. The instrument’s factor structure, reliability and validity were examined using confirmatory and explorative factor analyses.Results921 questionnaires were returned. Of these, 615 were eligible for factor analysis. The resulting SCOPE-PC questionnaire consisted of seven dimensions: ‘open communication and learning from errors’, ‘handover and teamwork’, ‘adequate procedures and working conditions’, ‘patient safety management’, ‘support and fellowship’, ‘intention to report events’ and ‘organisational learning’ with a total of 41 items. All dimensions had good reliability with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.70 – 0.90, and the questionnaire had a good construct validity.ConclusionsThe SCOPE-PC questionnaire has sound psychometric characteristics for use by the different professions in Dutch primary care to gain insight in their safety culture.

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