Health Care Workers' Perception of Patient Safety During COVID-19 Pandemic
Health Care Workers' Perception of Patient Safety During COVID-19 Pandemic
Objective: Analyze health care workers' perception of patient safety during the COVID 19
 pandemic.

 Methodology: Analytical cross-sectional observational study, with a quantitative focus on
 healthcare workers who are working on-site during the pandemic in the services of healthcare
 institutions that agree to participate in the countries where the study will be conducted, by
 applying a survey of patient safety perceptions in healthcare workers in times of pandemic.
 Analysis of the data will employ descriptive and inferential statistical techniques to meet
 the objectives of the study using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows version 25.0 software.

 Expected results: The study seeks to generate evidence for the perception of patient safety
 in times of pandemic, for which it will generate the submission of an article with the
 results obtained to an indexed journal and presentation at a scientific event.
Introduction

 Patient safety culture The concept of patient safety culture has become one of the strategies
 in health care institutions that seeks to intervene on adverse events, understood as: the set
 of characteristics, skills and attitudes, perceptions, abilities, competencies, among others,
 that are developed within the institutions and their members, which establish the commitment
 and capabilities to maintain and manage safety in health care in all processes that are
 developed within the organization. The issue of safety culture is part of the DNA of each
 organization, involving their operational processes and the perspective of how they manage
 them, with a view to becoming "highly reliable organizations", being institutions that
 despite working in very high risk situations, the presence of adverse events, accidents or
 complications is very low.

 Therefore, it is important to understand the patient's perception of safety that allows the
 evaluation of dimensions such as: commitment of the directives, processes of institutional
 continuous improvement, systems of notification of events and incidents, communication and
 climate of confidence, fundamental dimensions at the moment of measuring the culture.
 However, it is also important to assess how these dimensions have been impacted at times of a
 pandemic such as the current COVID19 , where around 29,000,000 positive cases and 1 million
 deaths are reported worldwide, a situation for which institutions and countries were not
 prepared and which may impact on patient safety processes, mediated by high levels of stress
 and anxiety in the health team work overload due to increased care and disability leave of
 workers who have acquired the virus.

 Therefore, this study seeks to examine health care workers' perceptions of patient safety
 during the COVID 19 pandemic.

 Rationale

 Given the environmental, social and economic impacts that the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is
 having on all population dynamics, it is important to highlight the effects it is having on
 the health sector, since it is there that it is directly involved in the access, treatment,
 control and resolution of patients with this pathology. Precisely its human capital, where
 health professionals are located, is the most representative and numerous population in the
 various processes and actions carried out within it. The positive or negative results related
 to the management of SARS-CoV-2 in users depend on this personnel.

 From the aspects highlighted by the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health
 Organization, given the situation of direct exposure to the virus through contact with health
 teams and its high increase in infections and deaths of health personnel, agree to promote
 protection strategies such as establishing standard procedures for prevention and control of
 infections, increase in the number of personal protective equipment (PPE), expansion in the
 processes of retraining, flexible workloads and increased staff.

 Although there are various initiatives and interventions by health institutions and national
 governments in response to this situation of security for health personnel, concern is
 further increased by the increase in the number of Covid - 19 infections, by August 2020 in
 the epidemiological alert of the Americas for this situation in health personnel, the
 panorama is as follows. The most affected countries are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and
 Colombia.

 On the Brazilian side, with a total of 268,954 confirmed cases in their health team, the
 nursing auxiliaries and nurses are the most impacted with 34% and 14% of these cases
 respectively. On the other hand, in Mexico the confirmed cases in the health personnel
 ascends to 97,632 people, the professional nursing is the most impacted work with 42% of the
 total of the professionals.

 In third place in Latin American, Argentina has reported a total of 16,194 cases among young
 people between the ages of 29 and 39. In the case of Colombia, there are currently 7,692
 cases, with a greater proportion of nurses and doctors.

 According to the above, this research seeks to analyze the perception of patient safety of
 health workers in Latin American countries during the COVID 19 pandemic. Due to the deficit
 of knowledge and the situation related to the impacts on health professionals, in the same
 way few initiatives deepen the generation of knowledge about this problem at the local level,
 this work is convenient to consolidate more effective actions in view of the increase of
 cases of health personnel.

 On the other hand, the research contributes to expand the linkage of patient safety in health
 organizations, the work of the professional and the improvement of processes according to the
 realities that are presented in each of the services, units, institutions that are adapting
 to the changing situations and variables of the pandemic.

 The work has a methodological utility since future research could be carried out related to
 the subject of hospitals or health institutions at different levels of care, the permanent
 training of human capital and the improvement of processes according to the adaptations in
 the management of the care units.

 Problem Statement

 The culture of patient safety has become the main strategy to mitigate and manage the
 presentation of adverse events related to health care. Faced with this phenomenon, studies
 have been carried out related to the validation of instruments that allow measuring the
 perception of workers and members of the health teams of the institutions of each of the
 dimensions of the organizational culture associated with safety, which they measure from the
 commitment of senior management, as communication strategies of the adverse event, job
 satisfaction, rewards and recognition, teamwork, working conditions, individual factors,
 attitudes and practices, continuous improvement process, among others, that have used
 construction validations, internal consistency and viability presenting very good results.
 Among these reported instruments are: safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ), Veteran Affairs
 Palo Alto/Stanford Patient Safety Center for Inquiry PSCI =Patient Safety Climate in
 Healthcare Organizations PSCHO, AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, Safety
 Climate Survey, modified ORMAQ and Safety Climate Scale, among others.

 To this extent, research has shown the following to be fundamental factors in the patient
 safety culture: the participation of management and process leaders as indispensable elements
 for the promotion and prioritization of patient safety issues, and where studies report low
 commitment and interest at this level, the use of anonymous event reporting systems and with
 the use of information and communication technologies, as well as low coordination and
 teamwork among units and members of the same team that is also perceived as leadership
 failures.

 Therefore, it is clear that there are great advances in measuring the culture of safety in
 health institutions, but this measurement has not been carried out in situations where health
 systems worldwide are collapsed and have great difficulties in responding to a pandemic, as
 is currently the case with COVID 19, where intensive care and emergency services have reached
 occupations of over 90%, which implies a greater work overload, and can interfere negatively
 with the safe attention to users, also given by high levels of stress and anxiety in the
 health team that has been shown to be related to aspects to be improved around this problem
 in previous studies, and which make the presentation of errors and incidents in health care
 more likely. Thus, this study seeks to analyze the perception of patient safety in the
 members of the health team during this pandemic, allowing the generation of evidence that
 will enable health systems and institutions to take action on the findings of the study and
 to strengthen, if necessary, those dimensions with negative perceptions that will allow a
 better response to this situation.

 Research question:

 What is the patient safety perception of health workers during the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020?
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  Healthcare professionals from all disciplines

 -  Technicians from all disciplines (health related)

 -  Working in a face-to-face manner during the pandemic in the services of health
 institutions

 -  Professional or technical personnel in charge of the quality and patient safety
 processes in the institutions.

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  Professional or technical staff from the administrative areas