Objective To investigate nurses' perception of hospital safety climate relevant to occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens and to analyze major influent factors. Methods A total of 768 nurses were surveyed by the questionnaire prepared by authors and the Chinese version of Hospital Safety Climate Scale (C-HSCS). The hospital safety climate was investigated from five dimensions, i.e. management support, barriers to safe working, feedback and training, cleanness and neatness of work places, and conflict and communication of the safety management. Major influent factors were analyzed. Results The overall reliability of C-HSCS was 0.92 and the mean scores of nurses' perception of hospital safety climate were 4.00± 0.56. Two dimensions with the lowest scores were barriers to safe working (2.85±1.04) and cleanness and neatness of work places (3.55±1.08). The items with lowest scores were light workload (2.51±1.21) and plenty of nurses (2.64±1.25). The differences of nurses of different ages, work periods, departments, and professional titles were statistically significant (P<0.05, P<0.01). Conclusion The nurses' perception of hospital safety climate is good. The establishment of hospital safety climate should focus on reasonably allocating human resources and building a better occupational environment. During the establishment of hospital safety climate, active and optimistic young nurses should be encouraged and experienced nurses should be heartened to involve in evaluating the safety threats. The focus of management of occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens is the emergency room.
