Patient Safety: The Patient's Perspective From Public Sector Health Institutions in the Algarve Region, Portugal

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to give a perspective of patient safety culture by users of public health units through a qualitative analysis of open questions asked. The sample consists of 241 patients from the health region of Algarve. The open questions were the object of content analysis in thematic and categorical form, followed by lexical treatment using the Iramuteq software. From the patients’ point of view, the evolution of patient safety is the result of an understanding of the meaning of the highlighted terms (safety, health, meaning), as well as of the intervention and improvement in these categories. It is known with these associations that for the patient, patient safety involves the existence of professionals for each individual (personal) and the existence of a receptive and empathic nature on the part of the professionals (human), as well as the need to demystify care for the understanding of patients (technician/knowledge) and the provision of care completely focused on the patient (attention).