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Background: Concern about patient safety has promoted efforts to improve safety climate. A better understanding of how patient safety climate differs among distinct work areas and disciplines in hospitals would facilitate the design and implementation of interventions., Objectives: To understand workers' perceptions of safety climate and ways in which climate varies among hospitals and by work area and discipline., Research Design: We administered the Patient Safety Climate in Healthcare Organizations survey in 2004-2005 to personnel in a stratified random sample of 92 US hospitals., Subjects: We sampled 100% of senior managers and physicians and 10% of all other workers. We received 18,361 completed surveys (52% response)., Measures: The survey measured safety climate perceptions and worker and job characteristics of hospital personnel. We calculated and compared the percent of responses inconsistent with a climate of safety among hospitals, work areas, and disciplines., Results: Overall, 17% of responses were inconsistent with a safety climate. Patient safety climate differed by hospital and among and within work areas and disciplines. Emergency department personnel perceived worse safety climate and personnel in nonclinical areas perceived better safety climate than workers in other areas. Nurses were more negative than physicians regarding their work unit's support and recognition of safety efforts, and physicians showed marginally more fear of shame than nurses. For other dimensions of safety climate, physician-nurse differences depended on their work area., Conclusions: Differences among and within hospitals suggest that strategies for improving safety climate and patient safety should be tailored for work areas and disciplines.

In recent years Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, California has effectively merged a variety of programs under the auspices of a single department. While these separate programs share certain similarities in terms of procedure and technology, a problem has arisen in terms of departmental identity. The department name was becoming a misnomer in that the department's original designation, a sleep lab, did not take into account the additional neurodiagnostic testing being offered. To combat this, an effort was made to rename the department in such a way that would reflect changes in programs and services while also providing an overall sense of community within the department. Procedurally, the renaming was designed as an all-encompassing staff project. During the presentation of the project, staff discussed the mission as well as vision statement of Huntington Hospital. The staff was supplied with a list of all diagnostic procedures and programming currently being offered. Correlations between services were accented and a two-week timeline was established to allow staff time to brainstorm. Ultimately, the benefits of the naming contest were twofold: first, department members gained an understanding of all aspects of the department, and second, the combined input created an overall sense of departmental unity amongst the staff.

This article creates a medical technology index to serve as a benchmark in strategic assessment of community hospitals. An expert panel assigned weights to the six components in the index. Empirical validation is achieved by regressing bond ratings on the index and using the index with eight other factors in explaining net incomes of community hospitals.