Health care Providers practice toward Patient Safety in El-Ebor family health centers, Egypt.

Background and purpose: Safety is an area of inquiry that emphasizes the identification of risk, reporting, analysis and the prevention of unintended or potential harm associated with healthcare. According to WHO International Classification for Patient Safety, it is defined as: an event or circumstance which could have resulted in unnecessary harm to a patient. Objectives: Identify the frequency of patient safety errors among health care providers (HCP) and risk factors allied with error.  Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in El-Ebor family health centers, Qalyubia Governorate, Egypt. All the health care providers (172) were recruited for the study .Medical group was 123(family physicians, dentists and pharmacist) and Paramedical group 49(nurses, social workers and chemists). The participants' practice regarding patient safety was assessed using an observational checklist adopted from the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) checklist after modification. The checklist included items about: patient identification, Laboratory & pharmacy measures, Infection control measures, Provider compliance and Safety climate. According to the observational checklist, participants were classified as having   accepted or non- accepted practice (practice medical errors).  Results: This study showed that nearly half of the health care providers were less than 30 years old (51.7%). The majority of them were females (91%). About 71% of the studied group had non-accepted practice (medical errors) regarding patient safety. Nearly 33% of the medical personnel had an accepted practice while 81.6% of the paramedical had non-accepted practice. There was statistically significant difference in the accepted practice concerning the patient's safety that interrelated to infection control and patient identification among paramedical group than medical category group. Group having experience less than five years showed more accepted practice regarding providers' compliance to guideline and policy than the other group Conclusion: Paramedical staff had an accepted safety practice regarding patient identification and infection control compared to medical staff. Provider's compliance to guideline was significant better between whom with less experience than with long experience.