oncerted efforts and close collaboration by hospital clusters and the Head Office's Quality and Safety Division, plus overwhelming support from more than 25,000 of our other colleagues, have enabled the HA's Patient Safety Culture Survey conducted in January to become a success in this regard.

Dr Anne Kwan, the Cluster Service Director (Quality & Safety) at Kowloon East Cluster and Chief of Service of Anaesthesiology and Pain Medicine at United Christian Hospital, who chairs the Work Group on the Patient Safety Culture Survey, tells HASLink that she and her colleagues are thrilled by the strong response the Survey received. "We invited everyone in the HA to participate, and 25,186 people completed and returned the questionnaire. This represents a response rate of 42.6%, a lot higher than similar surveys conducted by organisations in other parts of the world."

Data collected in the Survey have already been analysed, and quality and safety managers in the clusters will be reporting the findings to their colleagues in the hospitals. The Work Group hopes that hospitals will be able to use them to identify gaps in their services, and work out improvement strategies. In fact, the Patient Safety Culture Survey is a continuous quality improvement tool that enhances understanding of organisational factors which influence patient safety, and it helps to make possible long-term improvements to service safety and quality. Dr Kwan is therefore encouraging clusters to repeat the survey in two or three years' time, so as to test the effectiveness of the improvement strategies they have implemented.

Dr Kwan repeatedly expresses her gratitude to colleagues in the clusters and the Head Office's Quality and Safety Division for the support they gave the Work Group during the preparation and conducting of the Survey. She believes their enthusiastic response reflects their deep concern about patient safety. Finally, she thanks all the colleagues who participated in this Survey, and says she hopes we will continue to work hand in hand to strengthen the HA's patient safety culture.