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Background: Patient safety culture is an important factor in determining hospitals' ability to address and reduce the occurrence of adverse events (AEs). However, few studies have reported on the impact of nurses' perceptions of patient safety culture on the occurrence of AEs. Our study aimed to assess the association between nurses' perception of patient safety culture and their perceived proportion of adverse events. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out among 2295 nurses employed in thirty-two teaching hospitals in Iran. Nurses completed the Persian version of the hospital survey of patients' safety culture between October 2018 and September 2019. Results: Positive Response Rates of overall patient safety culture was 34.1% and dimensions of patient safety culture varied from 20.9 to 43.8%. Also, nurses estimated that the occurrence of six adverse events varied from 51.2–63.0% in the past year. The higher nurses' perceptions of "Staffing", "Hospital handoffs and transitions", "Frequency of event reporting", "Non-punitive response to error", "Supervisor expectation and actions promoting safety", "Communication openness", "Organizational learning continuous improvement", "Teamwork within units", and "Hospital management support patient safety" were significantly related to lower the perceived occurrence at least two out of six AEs (OR = 0.69 to 1.46). Conclusions: Our findings demonstrated that nurses' perception regarding patient safety culture was low and the perceived occurrence of adverse events was high. The research has also shown that the higher level of nurses' perception of patient safety culture was associated with lowered occurrence of AEs. Hence, managers could provide prerequisites to improve patient safety culture and reduce adverse events through different strategies, such as encouraging adverse events' reporting and holding training courses for nurses. However, further research is needed to assess how interventions addressing patient safety culture might reduce the occurrence of adverse events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim Nurses' emotional intelligence (EI) affects many of their behavioural skills. Given the importance of communication skills, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between EI and the communication skills of emergency department nurses. Method 253 nurses working in five hospitals affiliated to Ardabil University of Medical Sciences took part in this cross-sectional analytical study. Participants completed Goleman's EI Scale and a researcher-designed communication skills questionnaire. Validity and reliability of the tools were measured throughout the study. Data analysis was carried out using analysis of variance, Pearson correlation and Spearman correlation tests in SPSS v18. Findings The mean EI score was estimated to be 78.31 with the highest and lowest scores related to self-awareness (20.83) and self-management (18.19) dimensions respectively. The mean total score of communication skills was estimated to be 70.91. There was a significant relationship between total EI score and total communication skills score (r=0.775, P<0.01) and a strong significant relationship between the four dimensions of EI and the total score of communication skills. Conclusion Since EI and its dimensions have a positive effect on nurses' communication skills hospital managers can enhance EI by organising training sessions and promoting communication skills and provide the ground for continuous improvement of hospital services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nursing can be demanding and stressful with occupational stress posing a serious threat to nurses and patient outcomes. Aims/Objectives: To determine the prevalence of nurses' occupational stress and its associated risk factors. Design: Cross-sectional survey design. Methods: Nurses in 115 tertiary-level hospitals in 13 provinces in Iran were surveyed from August 2016–December 2017. Demographic information and occupational stress were assessed. 5422 distributed questionnaires were distributed with 2895 of returned surveys analyzed. One-way ANOVA and multiple linear regression analyses identified risk factors for occupational stress. Results: Mean score for overall occupational stress was 3.48 indicating a stress level between moderate and high, with 78.4% of respondents reporting that their job was stressful. Nurses reported issues with shiftwork, staffing, pay, workplace discrimination, management, policy and excessive workloads as sources of occupational stress. Risk factors in the multivariate analysis for higher occupational stress were female gender (p =.002), being married (p =.008), having lower educational levels (p <.001), increased work hours (p <.001), and working in emergency (p =.025), general wards (p =.012) and teaching hospitals (p <.001). Conclusions: The high prevalence of occupational stress amongst nurses in Iran demonstrates the extent of the issue, with recent reforms not effectively addressing occupational stress. The risk factors identified allow for more targeted interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Medical confidentiality and maintenance of patient personal privacy are considered two important moral obligations in medical ethics with a long history in medicine. To be efficient, a healthcare system needs active participation of and appropriate cooperation between the recipients and providers of healthcare services. This study was conducted to investigate healthcare service recipients' perceptions regarding observance of patient privacy and medical confidentiality in teaching healthcare centers affiliated with the Qom University of Medical Sciences. Methods: In this cross-sectional (descriptive-analytical) study that was conducted in 2015-2016, 380 patients referred to teaching healthcare centers affiliated with the Qom University of Medical Sciences were enrolled according to randomized sampling. Data were gathered by a researcher-developed questionnaire according to Patient Rights Charter and analyzed by descriptive and nonparametric statistics test in SPSS 16. Results: Patient privacy and confidentiality were not observed from the perspectives of 26.3% of them, partly observed from the perspectives of 50%, and fully observed from the perspectives of 23.7%. Alongside observance of patient privacy, the most important item, from the healthcare service recipients' perspectives, was observance of client orientation, which was observed from the perspectives of 24.5% of them, partly observed from the perspectives of 50.4%, and not observed from the perspectives of 25.1%. Conclusion: From half of the patients' perspectives in the healthcare centers affiliated with the Qom University of Medical Sciences, patient privacy and medical confidentiality were partly observed. Therefore, the authorities can take necessary steps to set priorities and appropriately plan for improving observance of the patient privacy and medical confidentiality as well as to respect the patients' territory and rights in all areas, especially nursing, administrative, educational, and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]