Press Ganey Releases Annual Safety Culture Trends Report

Press Ganey released findings from its annual safety culture trends report: Healing without harm: Safety culture trends 2023. This report, which looks at survey data from the past year, reveals a favorable shift in performance with the upward trending of perception of safety culture among clinical and nonclinical staff, even as perception continues to trend downward among senior leadership and physicians.  

The report outlines the key trends shaping safety culture in 2023 and recommends a number of high-impact actions for senior healthcare leaders to create and sustain safety culture across their organizations. 

Key year-over-year findings include:  

• Employees overall perceived improvement in safety culture within their departments and teams. Results showed moderate but statistically significant gains among clinical and nonclinical employees alike, particularly related to elements of Resources & Teamwork, such as staffing, teamwork within the unit, communication and job stress.  
• However, results reveal that employees don’t perceive aspects of safety culture to be as strong across their broader organizations, as reflected in lower scores related to Pride & Reputation.  
• Perceptions of safety culture among senior management continued to decline across all domains measured: Prevention & Reporting, Pride & Reputation and Resources & Teamwork.  
• Physicians also saw a decline across all domains of safety culture. Most notably, the module with the largest decline for physicians was Pride & Reputation.  

Press Ganey’s analysis is based on safety culture survey responses from nearly 814,000 members of the healthcare workforce from 194 systems and 3,279 facilities, collected throughout the calendar year of 2022. Roles reflected include clinical professionals, nurses, advanced practice providers, physicians, clerical workers, licensed technical workers, security team members, skilled maintenance professionals, mid-level management, nonclinical professionals and senior management.