Objective: Present study is based on the fact that inertia behaviors, which can be observed on health employees, can affect patient safety; it is aimed to examine the relationship between the inertia behaviors of nurses and the patient safety.

Material and Method: This is a descriptive study. The study was carried out in two different health institutions in Konya Province from July to October 2016. The total number of nurses were 859 (610+249) in the institutions and 266 nurses were recruited to the study who were representative all the nurses. The data were collected via questionnaire. The questionnaire contains demographic characteristics of the nurses, and Knowledge Inertia and Patient Safety Culture Hospital scale (A,C,E,F). In the analysis of the data, the confirmatory factor analysis, the descriptive statistics, the correlation analysis and among the dimensions in a relationship with each other, the regression analysis were carried out.

Results: When the analysis results are examined, it is seen that 75% of the nurses are female, 74% of them

are married, 42% of them are between 30 and 39 years of age. The average point of sub-dimension of the inertia of learning has been found 2.17±0.67 and the average point of sub-dimension of the experience inertia has been found 3.62±0.47. 33% of the nurses’ degrees of evaluating patient safety are very good and 45% of them are acceptable. A negative and moderate relationship has been found between the dimensions of teamwork (r=-0.415, p<0.01), transfers and hospital responses (r=-0.380, p<0.01) within the units in terms of the dimension of the nurses’ behavior of the inertia of learning. When the results related to significance of the regression coefficient are examined, it is seen that its statistically significant effect is on the sub-dimension of teamwork, and transfers and hospital responses within the units (t=-4.548, p<0,001; t=-3.983, p<0.001).

Conclusion: There is a relationship between the inertia behavior and patient safety culture, and 24% of the total of sub-dimensions of patient safety scale for hospitals is explained by the inertia of learning and 15.5% of it is explained by the total knowledge inertia. Accordingly, efforts should be made to be a learning organization in developing the patient safety and the inertial employees should be organized.

Patient safety Inertia Nurses