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Background: Patient safety culture is an indicator of healthcare quality and a topic of global importance in medical care. Purpose: In this study, the attitudes towards patient safety culture of nursing staff working in the emergency, intensive care, and general wards are compared before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A retrospective research design was utilized and an anonymous questionnaire survey conducted on the Taiwan Patient Safety Culture Survey web-based platform system was used to collect the data. The survey was administered in a regional hospital in northern Taiwan between 2018 and 2020. The 1,540 nursing personnel who participated in this study worked in the emergency, intensive care units, or general adult ward. The analysis focused on assessing participant attitudes towards patient safety culture in terms of both the overall score and sub-dimensions. Results: The participants were mostly female and between 21 and 30 years old. A majority had completed a diploma or university education. The two analyses revealed the highest and lowest average scores were earned, respectively, in the "teamwork" and "resilience" dimensions of patient safety culture. In 2020, the average scores for all dimensions were lower than in 2018, and the average scores for the emergency and critical care group were lower than those for the general adult ward group. Sub-dimension analysis showed that the general adult ward group earned significantly higher scores in "teamwork" across all three sub-dimensions compared to the emergency and critical care groups. The general ward group exhibited the most significant score decline between the two surveys. Conclusions/ Implications for Practice: Overall scores were found to have decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic period (2020). Notably, emergency and intensive care nurses earned consistently lower scores, likely due to the severity of patient conditions and increased pandemic-related workloads and stress. "Resilience" scores were the lowest among all nursing staff, with the most significant drop seen in general ward nurses. Enhancing nursing staff education and training as well as addressing their psychological well-being will be crucial to improving patient safety culture attitudes. Managers should provide infection control, resilience training, and psychological counseling to help nurses manage the challenges posed by infectious diseases effectively and enhance patient safety culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work environments at healthcare organizations involve biological, chemical, and physical risks. Healthcare providers adhere to safe work practices and promote organizational activities proactively to improve practice safety and patient safety, both of which are closely linked to quality of care. In light of the limited research on safety culture and employee safety performance in the healthcare industry, this paper was developed to introduce the concept of hospital safety climate; the factors known to influence the safety climate in hospitals and safety performance and outcomes; and related safety climate measurement tools from the perspective of promoting safe performance among hospital healthcare providers. We recommend management create a safe work environment to reinforce employees' positive perceptions about the commitment of management to safety and subsequently promote shared beliefs regarding workplace safety and motivate employees to create a safer work environment. In addition, healthcare providers' perceptions of the safety climate should be assessed to identify strengths and weaknesses in the safety climate, guide the development of related improvement measures, and enhance the safety-climate perceptions of employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) use is high, presenting a serious public health problem. In older adults, PIM increases the risks of adverse drug events, falls, hospitalizations, and emergency treatments as well as related medical expenses. The currently popular criteria for determining medication appropriateness and several common medication appropriateness assessment tools are introduced in this paper, including the Medication Appropriateness Index, the Beers criteria series, the Screening Tool of Older Person's Prescriptions (STOPP) and the Screening Tool to Alert doctors to Right Treatment (START) series, Thailand criteria, and the PIM-Taiwan criteria, with the goal of facilitating their application by medical professionals in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]