Investigation of employee safety perceptions of healthcare personnel working in the emergency department

Objective: The object of the study is to review employee safety perceptions of healthcare personnel working in the emergency department. Method: Target population of this descriptive study consisted of all the healthcare professionals who work at emergency services of university and public hospitals in the city center of Konya. In the study, no sample was selected and 111 healthcare professionals who work at emergency services of university and public hospitals and accepted to participate in the study constituted the sample of the study. Data was collected by an “employee safety perception survey”. Ethics committee and the required institute approvals was obtained. The data was evaluated calculating the percentage and frequency in computer environment. Results: According to the findings, it was detected that 45.5% of the participants felt incompetent regarding how to react in the cases of sharp object injuries and contact with blood and body fluids. 79.3% of the participants exposed to one or more of the employee safety threatening situations, 40.9% of the exposed ones did not report the situation and 63.9% of them stated “I did not care” as the cause. Conclusion: It appears that employees were more likely to believe that they were working with insufficient staff. Arrangements and improvements should be made about issues that have an adverse effect on employees’ psychology such as personnel number, heavy workload, etc.; a distinct education program should be arranged for each safety-threatening situation; and regulations, which ensure also the directors to give importance to the employee safety, should be made