Despite growing global attention to patient safety, studies of safety culture in the context of nursing hospitals remain limited, especially in Lithuania. Most decisions lacking empirical grounding are based on general guidelines that are more frequently applied in acute care settings—such as general hospitals, emergency departments, or surgical units. However, nursing hospitals have a distinct patient profile, care duration, resource allocation, and levels of staff emotional stress. Therefore, general patient safety assessment models often fail to fully capture the situation in these settings (Ginsburg et al., 2022).

Currently, there are no widely used, empirically validated instruments in Lithuania specifically adapted to assess the safety culture of nursing hospital staff. This limits the ability to systematically monitor changes, evaluate the impact of specific factors (e.g., workload, lack of emotional support, or access to technology) on safety culture expression, and develop clear, data-driven strategies (Vėlavičienė & Petrauskienė, 2023).

Moreover, patient safety culture is still often understood too narrowly identified only as adverse event management or error reporting systems. Such a view overlooks other important aspects, such as psychosocial factors affecting staff, professional training, team relationships, digital literacy, and leadership structures. Meanwhile, the scientific literature increasingly acknowledges that patient safety culture is a holistic phenomenon influenced not only by organizational protocols but also by employees’ experiences, emotional well-being, and ability to learn from mistakes without fear of consequences (Flin et al., 2006; Sammer et al., 2010).

The lack of research in Lithuania also hinders the application of international recommendations—without contextualized data, it is difficult to determine which interventions would be effective in a specific segment of the healthcare system. This study seeks to fill that gap by applying empirical research methods to analyze the patient safety culture in nursing hospitals, addressing both organizational and human aspects. It also opens the possibility of developing standardized assessment instruments that could eventually be used to evaluate and improve patient safety strategies at the national level.

Read the full study here: Patient safety culture in nursing facilities in the context of adverse events