Patient safety culture in intensive care: Integrative review

Abstract

Objective: To identify the knowledge produced in the literature on patient safety culture in intensive care. Method: This is an integrative review based on the theoretical framework of Whittemore and Knaf, carried out at the portals PubMed, Virtual Health Library (VHL) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), through the crossing of the descriptors "organizational culture", "patient safety", and "intensive care units", through the Boolean operator "AND", totaling 22 publications. Results: Three categories of evidence were identified: Instruments for assessing the patient safety culture, strengths and weaknesses of the patient safety culture in intensive care, patient safety culture in intensive care and associated factors. Conclusion: The publications demonstrated the difficulty to build a local safety culture, since none presented a positive patient safety culture. However, factors associated with the safety culture were demonstrated, in which it is possible to intervene for its better implementation.