THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: Patient safety is a strategic goal of managers of all health care facilities in the Czech Republic. The development of a safety culture in the facility helps to ensure high quality health care. GOAL OF THE SURVEY was to assess the safety culture with regard to patient safety and team cooperation. A partial goal was to confirm the hypothesis that team cooperation among health care staff significantly influences patient safety. METHODOLOGY: 772 nurses took part in a quantitative survey. The respondents were nurses working shifts in inpatient departments of hospitals in the Czech Republic. RESULTS: Patient safety was described as excellent by 17.5% of nurses. It is described as very good by 60.2% of nurses and described as acceptable by 20.5% nurses. 78% of respondents agreed with the statement that patient safety was never neglected at the expense of increased workload. More than 10% of nurses reported that there were problems with patient safety. 19.8% of respondents were reported that efforts to prevent errors were not practiced at their clinic, and, therefore, and only chance had prevent more errors from occurring. According to 64.9% of respondents, the staff on the wards supported each other and a similar number of respondents reported that they showed respect for each other (60.2%). Respondents reported that intra-ward support increased the degree of patient safety. CONCLUSION: Results from the survey show that team cooperation is a precondition for providing safe patient care, which cannot be underestimated and must be refined and improved through good hospital management.

University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Faculty of Health and Social Studies Department of Nursing and Midwifery České Budějovice Czech Republic