[Analysis and modelling of safety culture in a Mexican hospital by Markov chains]. / Análisis y modelado de la cultura de seguridad de un hospital mexicano mediante cadenas de Markov.

INTRODUCTION: The objective of this study was to analyse and model the safety culture with Markov chains, as well as predicting and/or prioritizing over time the evolutionary behaviour of the safety culture of the health's staff in one Mexican hospital. METHOD: The Markov chain theory has been employed in the analysis, and the input data has been obtained from a previous study based on the Safety Attitude Questionnaire (CAS-MX-II), by considering the following 6 dimensions: safety climate, teamwork, job satisfaction, recognition of stress, perception of management, and work environment. RESULTS: The results highlighted the predictions and/or prioritisation of the approximate time for the possible integration into the evolutionary behaviour of the safety culture as regards the "slightly agree" (Likert scale) for: safety climate (in 12 years; 24.13%); teamwork (8 years; 34.61%); job satisfaction (11 years; 52.41%); recognition of the level of stress (8 years; 19.35%); and perception of the direction (22 years; 27.87%). The work environment dimension was unable to determine the behaviour of staff information, i.e. no information cultural roots were obtained. CONCLUSION: In general, it has been shown that there are weaknesses in the safety culture of the hospital, which is an opportunity to suggest changes to the mandatory policies in order to strengthen it.