Background and importance Patient safety should be a cross-cutting issue in all hospital services. It is important to assess patient safety culture in the units to implement improvement measures and offer quality and safe healthcare to patients.

Aim and objectives To analyse patient safety climate in a Hospital Pharmacy department.

Material and methods Descriptive, transversal study carried out through an anonymous survey in September 2021. All pharmacy staff were invited to participate.The survey applied was the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Hospital Survey SOPS Version 1.0-Spanish.

The survey has 42 items with five response options on a Likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree or never) to 5 (strongly agree or always).

A strength is considered if at least 75% of respondents rate the ítem positively, while it needs improvement if at least 50% rate it negatively. Items are grouped into 12 composite measures.

Data were analysed with an application available on the patient safety page of the Ministry of Health.

Results Response rate: 91% (44 surveyed). 69% tecnicians/nurses, 31% resident pharmacists/pharmacists. 56% worked 20–39 hours/week and the rest 40–59 hours; 46% had worked in the hospital for less than 1 year, 1 to 5 years (34%), 21 years or more (10%), 6 to 20 years the rest. 48% had been working in the unit for less than 1 year, 33% 1 to 5 years, 6 to 21 years or more the rest.12% had direct interaction with patients.

Global results were: teamwork within units 69%, supervisor/manager expectations and actions promoting patient safety 64%, communication openness 57%, organisational learning-continuous improvement 51%, feedback and communication about error 47%, overall perceptions of patient safety 42%, nonpunitive response to error 39%, teamwork across units 39%, frequency events reported 38%, staffing 38%, management support 37%, handoffs and transitions 29%.

The overall grade on patient safety was perceived: very good 45%, excellent 30%, acceptable 20%, poor the rest.

Conclusion and relevance Eight need-of-improvement areas were perceived: management support and handoffs-transitions being the worst rated. Teamwork within units, supervisor/manager expectations/actions were the best perceived.

No strengths were found; however, the overall perception was rated as excellent or very good by the majority.

Assessing the baseline-state of safety climate is a good starting point for identifying areas for improvement.

Conflict of interest No conflict of interest