Background: The potential for unsafe acts to result in harm to patients is constant risks to be managed in any\r\nhealth care delivery system including pharmacies. The number of reported errors is influenced by a various\r\nelements including safety culture. The aim of this study is to investigate a possible relationship between reported\r\ndispensing errors and safety culture, taking into account demographic and pharmacy variables, in Swedish\r\ncommunity pharmacies.\r\nMethods: A cross-sectional study was performed, encompassing 546 (62.8%) of the 870 Swedish community\r\npharmacies. All staff in the pharmacies on December 1st, 2007 were included in the study. To assess safety culture\r\ndomains in the pharmacies, the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) was used. Numbers of dispensed prescription\r\nitems as well as dispensing errors for each pharmacy across the first half year of 2008 were summarised.\r\nIntercorrelations among a number of variables including SAQ survey domains, general properties of the pharmacy,\r\ndemographic characteristics, and dispensing errors were calculated. A negative binomial regression model was used\r\nto further examine the relationship between the variables and dispensing errors.\r\nResults: The first analysis demonstrated a number of significant correlations between reported dispensing errors\r\nand the variables examined. Negative correlations were found with SAQ domains Teamwork Climate, Safety\r\nClimate, Job Satisfaction as well as mean age and response rates. Positive relationships were demonstrated with\r\nStress Recognition (SAQ), number of employees, educational diversity, birth country diversity, education country\r\ndiversity and number of dispensed prescription items. Variables displaying a significant relationship to errors in this\r\nanalysis were included in the regression analysis. When controlling for demographic variables, only Stress\r\nRecognition, mean age, educational diversity and number of dispensed prescription items and employees, were still\r\nassociated with dispensing errors.\r\nConclusion: This study replicated previous work linking safety to errors, but went one step further and controlled\r\nfor a variety of variables. Controlling rendered the relationship between Safety Climate and dispensing insignificant,\r\nwhile the relationship to Stress Recognition remained significant. Variables such as age and education country\r\ndiversity were found also to correlate with reporting behaviour. Further studies on the demographic variables\r\nmight generate interesting results.
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