The experiences, needs and expectations of patients regarding participation at home: an explorative study in Belgium.

BACKGROUND: Patients have an important role in the improvement of their health. Patient participation is a key component to achieving this. Some form of patient participation is already present in home care, but this needs to be optimised. AIM: Gaining insight into the expectations, experiences and needs of patients regarding patient participation in home care. DESIGN: A qualitative design was used. SETTING: The study was conducted in the Flemish part of Belgium, in a purposeful sample of patients who have already received nursing care at home for at least 6 weeks. METHODS: Semi-structured face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted and analysed using the Qualitative Analyse Guide of Leuven. RESULTS: Patient participation in home care is a dynamic process. A total of six components, which interact with each other, were identified that explain this process. CONCLUSION: Patient participation in home care is the interaction of different components of a whole mechanism. Within this mechanism, home nurses play a key role to facilitate participation for patients.

Exploring and Evaluating Patient Safety Culture in a Community-Based Primary Care Setting.

OBJECTIVES: The primary aim was to measure patient safety culture in two home care services in Belgium (Flanders). In addition, variability based on respondents' profession was examined. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted by administering the SCOPE-Primary Care questionnaire in two home care service organizations. RESULTS: In total, 1875 valid questionnaires were returned from 2930 employees, representing a response rate of 64%. The highest mean patient safety culture score was found for "organizational learning" (mean [SD] = 3.81 [0.53]), followed by "support and fellowship" (mean [SD] = 3.76 [0.61]), "open communication and learning from error" (mean [SD] = 3.73 [0.64]), and "patient safety management" (mean [SD] = 3.71 [0.60]). The lowest mean scores were found for "handover and teamwork" (mean [SD] = 3.28 [0.58]) and "adequate procedures and working conditions" (mean [SD] = 3.30 [0.56]). Moreover, managers/supervisors scored significantly higher on the dimensions "open communication and learning from error," "adequate procedures and working conditions," "patient safety management," "support and fellowship," and "organizational learning" than clinical and nonclinical staff. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, organizational learning is perceived as most positive. However, large gaps remain in the continuity of care as "handover and teamwork" is perceived as the most negative safety culture dimension. With knowledge of the current patient safety culture, organizations can redesign processes or implement improvement strategies to avoid patient safety incidents and patient harm in the future.

The SCOPE-PC instrument for assessing patient safety culture in primary care: a psychometric evaluation.

INTRODUCTION: Primary healthcare differs from hospitals in terms of - inter alia - organisational structure. Therefore, patient safety culture could differ between these settings. Various instruments have been developed to measure collective attitudes of personnel within a primary healthcare organisation. However, the number of valid and reliable instruments is limited. OBJECTIVES: Psychometric properties of the SCOPE-Primary Care instrument were tested to examine the instrument's applicability in home care services in Belgium. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted by administering the SCOPE-PC questionnaire in a single home care organisation with more than 1000 employees, including nurses, midwives, healthcare assistants, diabetes educators and nursing supervisors. First, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test whether the observed dataset fitted to the proposed seven-factor model of the SCOPE-PC instrument. Second, Cronbach's alphas were calculated to examine internal consistency reliability. Finally, the instrument's validity was also examined. RESULTS: In total, 603 questionnaires were retained for further analysis, representing an overall response rate of 43.9%. Most respondents were nursing staff, followed by healthcare assistants and nursing supervisors. The results of the confirmatory factor analyses satisfied the chosen cut-offs, indicating an acceptable to good model fit. With the exception of the dimension 'organizational learning' (0.58), Cronbach's alpha scores of the SCOPE-PC scales indicated a good level of internal consistency: 'open communication and learning from error' (0.86), 'handover and teamwork' (0.78), 'adequate procedures and working conditions' (0.73), 'patient safety management' (0.81), 'support and fellowship' (0.75), and 'intention to report events (0.85). Moreover, inter-correlations between the seven dimensions as well as with the patient safety grade were moderate to good. CONCLUSIONS: The present study indicated that the SCOPE-Primary Care instrument has good psychometric properties for home care services in Belgium. No modifications are required to the original questionnaire in order to allow benchmarking between primary healthcare settings.