Evaluation of Perception of Hospital Signs and its Relationship With Demographic Factors

Background and Objectives: Safety signs will be useful if they are distinctive and attractive for individuals, and individuals can communicate with them, because they will not be able to identify the risks and actions necessary to avoid the risk if they do not understand properly. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the level of perception of hospital safety signs and related demographic factors. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out in 2 hospitals in Genaveh in 2017. The number of participants in this study was 120 employees and patients in the hospital. The inclusion criteria for this study were non-presence of dyschromatopsia, ages 15 to 55 years, and sufficient cognitive ability. The tools for this study were the International Organization for Standardization Questionnaire (ISO9186-1.2007) and the demographic information questionnaire. The 7 safety signs were used. The simple random sampling method was used. Data were analyzed using SPSS 16 and chi-square, the Kruskal–Wallis test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Findings: The highest level of perception of hospital safety signs was related to forbidden entry with 95% correct answers and the lowest level of perception of the signs was related to the pharmacy with 6.7%. The chi-square test showed that in more than 85% of the cases of safety signs, there was no significant relationship between age, gender and previous education with the safety signs (P < 0.05). Furthermore, Kruskal-Wallis test showed that there is no significant difference between the different job shifts in terms of perceptions among men and women (P < 0.05). However, ANOVA showed that there is a significant difference between the different levels of education in terms of perception between the sample. Conclusions: The level of perception of hospital signs among staff and colleagues is relatively desirable. The results of this study showed that the only factor that can affect the perception of the signs of hospital safety is the level of education and other factors such as gender and work history, work shift, employee or client, and previous education are not factors influencing the perception of safety signs. Therefore, continuous training for staff and public education through public and localized media is suggested to improve the hospital safety culture.