The Finnish patient safety culture survey TUKU—development and validation

Safety culture questionnaires are instruments for evaluating the level of safety culture and identifying development needs. Several safety culture questionnaires for health care organizations (e.g., Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, Sorra & Nieva 2004 and Safety Attitudes Questionnaire, Sexton et al. 2006) have been developed, but no validated Finnish questionnaire has previously been developed. For the existing surveys, the theoretical background and measures used differ a great deal (Reiman, Pietikäinen & Oedewald 2010). In many cases the theoretical reasoning behind the dimensions is thin or it might even be missing altogether. The survey development reported in this paper is based on a model of patient safety culture (Reiman et al. 2010) that differentiates between psychological dimensions, organizational functions and social processes. The survey has been developed to measure the psychological dimensions and employees’ perceptions of the organizational functions.