Clinical nurse competence and its effect on patient safety culture: A Systematic Review

Background: Unsafe health practices are one of the leading causes of disability and even death. Competent nurses are crucial to ensure safe and high-quality health care services. The patient safety culture is concerned with internalizing safety beliefs, values, and attitudes, translating them into health care practices, and committing to maintain an error-free health environment. A high level of competence ensures the achievement and compliance with the safety culture goal. Objective This systematic review aims to identify the relationship between the level of nursing competence and the safety culture score and perception among nurses at their workplace. Methods: : Four international online databases were searched to find relevant studies published between 2018 and 2022. Peer-reviewed articles using quantitative methods, targeting nursing staff, written in English were included. After reviewing 117 identified articles, 16 full-text studies were included. The PRISMA 2020 checklist for systematic reviews was used. Results: : Evaluation of the articles indicates safety culture, competency, and perception are assessed using a wide variety of instruments. Safety culture was generally perceived as positive. No unique and standard tool has been developed to investigate the effect of safety competency on the perception of the safety culture in a standardized way. Conclusions: : Existing research provides evidence of a positive correlation between the nursing competence and patient safety score. Future research is recommended to investigate ways to measure the effect of nursing competency level on safety culture in health care institutions. Relevance for Clinical Practice Clinicians and leaders in the clinical setting may consider applying the findings of this study to address nursing competence as a component of addressing the patient safety culture in their practice setting.