The aim of this study was to evaluate the perception of patient safety culture among nurses working in public versus private hospitals.

This descriptive and comparative research study was conducted among nurses working in public and private hospitals which are related to Health Ministry in Istanbul between March and May 2016. A total of 274 volunteer nurses who had worked at least 1 year and having completed orientation training participated in this study. The research data were collected with using a questionnaire containing demographic characteristics prepared by researchers and “Patient Safety Culture Scale” which is prepared by Turkmen et al. in 2011. The data has been analysed at 95% confidence intervals and 5% significance level in SPSS-22 software programme. Descriptive statistics was done while evaluating data variables using frequency, percentage, t-test, Mann Whitney U test, One Way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis tests.

As a result of findings related to patient safety, it has found that 95.6% of nurses had completed their training. The highest mean score obtained from the scale as lower size “Training of employees” was been found to be 3.00 ± 0.44. According to the results of our study, the number of patients seen in daily and weekly working hours increase represents that the negative impact on patient safety. It is determinated that the nurses who are satisfied with their professions and sections have higher points than the nurses who had average score of patient safety. A significant difference was found between hospitals in terms of patient safety culture. It is recommended that making more comparisons between institutions for patient safety culture, lacking or need of improvement areas should be done in the field of study.

Keywords: Patient Safety, Patient Safety Culture, Nurse, Nursing Services