Safety climate in the operating room in the pre-pandemic and pandemic period of COVID-19: A mixed method study.

Introduction: To verify whether the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the safety climate based on the perception of the multiprofessional team in the operating room and to analyze the domains of the safety climate during the pre-pandemic and pandemic period of COVID-19, demonstrating the intersections of quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Methods: Mixed-method research using a convergent approach strategy, carried out in the operating room of a university hospital, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The nature of the quantitative phase was cross-sectional, and the nature of the qualitative phase was descriptive. We used the Pillar Integration Process to integrate the data. This research considered the pre-pandemic period was defined as before March 2020 and for the pandemic period, the 2nd and 3rd global waves. Research was approved by the institution's board management and ethics committee.
Results: 145 health professionals participated in the quantitative approach, and 20 in the qualitative approach. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was highlighted in the domains 'Perceived stress' (p-value = 0.017); 'Working conditions' (p-value = 0.040). Six categories emerged from the qualitative analysis, namely: Stress and professional performance due to COVID-19; Patient safety protocols in the operating room; Responsibility for patient safety, lack of effective communication and performance feedback; Biosafety of the professional staff in the operating room; Security culture maturity; Fair culture, organizational learning, and reporting mistakes. As a result of the data integration, 6 pillars were identified: Perception of communication in the operating room; Evolution of safety culture; Overview of protocol management and implementation; Fair organizational culture; Perception of stress due to COVID-19; Perception of professional performance due to COVID-19.
Conclusions: The impact that COVID-19 had on the safety climate in the operating room is evident. It underlines the need to implement strategies that support the solidification of attitudes aimed at patient safety, even in emergencies.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2024 Ferreira et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)