Chapter 4. Characteristics of Respondents

2007 Comparative Database Report

This chapter presents information describing the respondents within the participating hospitals. The data presented here are based on respondents' answers to survey questions that asked them to indicate the hospital work area/unit where they spend most of their work time, their staff position, and whether they typically have direct interaction with patients.

In the tables presented in this chapter, respondents from hospitals that omitted one of these questions, or those who did not respond, are shown as missing in the tables and are excluded from total percentages.

Highlights

  • There are 108,621 hospital staff respondents from 382 hospitals.
  • Over one-third of respondents (34 percent) selected "Other" as their work area, followed by "Surgery" (10 percent), "Many different hospital units/No specific unit" (9 percent), and "Medicine" (9 percent).
  • Over one-third of respondents (36 percent) selected "Registered Nurse" or "LVN/LPN" as their staff position, followed by "Other" (23 percent), and "Technician (e.g., EKG, Lab, Radiology)" (11 percent).
  • Most respondents (76 percent) indicated they had direct interaction with patients.

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Respondent Work Area/Unit

Over one-third respondents (34 percent) selected "Other" as their work area, followed by "Surgery" (10 percent), "Many different hospital units/No specific unit" (9 percent), and "Medicine" (9 percent) (Table 4-1). Because the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture uses generic categories for hospital work areas and units, it appears that a large percentage of respondents chose the "Other" response option that allowed them to specify the name of their specific work area or unit. Participating hospitals were not asked to submit written or other-specify responses for any questions so no data are available to further describe the respondents in the "Other" work area category.

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Respondent Staff Position

Over one-third of respondents (36 percent) selected "Registered Nurse" or "LVN/LPN" as their staff position, followed by "Other" (23 percent), and "Technician (e.g., EKG, Lab, Radiology)" (11 percent) (Table 4-2). Similar to the work area/unit question, many respondents chose the "Other" response option that allowed them to specify their specific staff position, but no data are available to further describe the respondents in the "Other" staff position category.

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Respondent Interaction with Patients

The survey asks respondents whether they typically have direct interaction or contact with patients. As shown in Table 4-3, most respondents (76 percent) indicated "yes," they had direct interaction with patients.

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Page last reviewed December 2012
Internet Citation: Chapter 4. Characteristics of Respondents: 2007 Comparative Database Report. December 2012. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. https://archive.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/patientsafetyculture/hospital/2007/hospdbch4.html