Neonatal intensive care unit safety culture varies widely.

BACKGROUND: Variation in healthcare delivery and outcomes in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) may be partly explained by differences in safety culture.

OBJECTIVE: To describe NICU care giver assessments of safety culture, explore variability within and between NICUs on safety culture domains, and test for association with care giver characteristics.

METHODS: NICU care givers in 12 hospitals were surveyed using the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ), which has six scales: teamwork climate, safety climate, job satisfaction, stress recognition, perception of management and working conditions. Scale means, SDs and percent positives (percent agreement) were calculated for each NICU.

RESULTS: There was substantial variation in safety culture domains among NICUs. Composite mean score across the six domains ranged from 56.3 to 77.8 on a 100-point scale and NICUs in the top four NICUs were significantly different from the bottom four (p