Determinants of safety climate at primary care level in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda

A cross‑sectional study across 138 selected primary healthcare facilities

Safety climate is an essential component of achieving Universal Health Coverage, with several organisational, unit or team-level, and individual health worker factors identified as influencing safety climate. Few studies however, have investigated how these factors contribute to safety climate within health care settings in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) The current study examines the relationship between key organisational, unit and individual-level factors and safety climate across primary health care centres in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda.

Our findings highlight the importance of unit-level factors—and in specific, teamwork and supportive supervision—as particularly important contributors to perceptions of safety climate among primary health workers in LMICs. Implications for practice are discussed.