Social Representations of Nurses on Medical Safety Culture in Clinical Care for Elderly People

Abstract

Evaluating the culture of drug safety, of certain services, and specific subjects, especially for the elderly population, makes it possible to identify gaps in clinical nursing care. The study aimed to analyze the social representations of nurses regarding the culture of drug safety in clinical care for the elderly people. This is a descriptive and exploratory research of qualitative nature, having the theoretical support of social representations. The chapter samples 38 nurses via interview and a non-participant observation. Analysis is done using Alceste software. This resulted in seven stable classes, and Class 3 had the largest representation, 23% of the corpus. Class 3 maintained hierarchical and semantic proximity to Class 2, which deals with technologies to ensure the safety of elderly patients in the use of medicines. For nurses, technologies help in the safety of elderly patients, but do not guarantee the extinction of adverse events. The chapter considered the need for patient safety to become an organizational culture favoring the quality of clinical nursing care in the handling of medicines.