Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for the SOPS Hospital Survey

The AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture® (SOPS^®) Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for hospitals was designed for use with the core SOPS Hospital Survey to help hospitals assess the extent to which their organization's culture supports workplace safety for providers and staff. The supplemental items can be added to the end of the Hospital Survey, just before the Background Questions.

Supplemental Items

• Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for the Hospital Survey—English (Word, 68 KB; PDF, 479 KB).
• Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for the Hospital Survey—Spanish (Word, 77 KB; PDF, 390 KB).

Administration Instructions 

Instructions on how to administer the SOPS supplemental items can be found at Supplemental Items.

Measures Covered by the Workplace Safety Items

_{* The Work Stress/Burnout item was adapted from Dr. Mark Linzer's Mini-Z 2.0 survey tool (https://www.professionalworklife.com/mini-z-survey).}

Workplace Safety Results

• 2024 Results for the AHRQ SOPS Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for Hospitals (PDF, 1 MB); Executive Summary (PDF, 509 KB); Appendixes (PDF, 1 MB)—Results for the Hospital Workplace Safety Supplemental Items include data submitted to the 2024 Hospital Database for a total of 61,767 providers and staff in 94 hospitals.
• 2022 Updated Results for the AHRQ SOPS Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for Hospitals (PDF, 927 KB); Appendix C (PDF, 553 KB)—Presents data submitted to the 2022 Hospital Database for a total of 40 hospitals and more than 11,000 individual survey respondents. The report consists of a narrative description of the findings and appendixes, presenting data by respondent characteristics for the database hospitals
• Pilot Study Results From the AHRQ SOPS Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for Hospitals (PDF, 543 KB)—Pilot study results for the Hospital Workplace Safety Supplemental Items. The supplemental items for this report displays results of 28 hospitals with more than 7,000 respondents in May–June 2021.

Resource List

This document contains references to websites that provide practical resources hospitals can use to implement changes to improve the culture of workplace safety in their organizations.

• Improving Workplace Safety in Hospitals: A Resource List for Users of the AHRQ Workplace Safety Supplemental Items (PDF, 227 KB).

Learn more about the Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for Hospitals with these two webcasts: 

• AHRQ SOPS Workplace Safety Supplemental Items for Hospitals (Webcast) — (December 16, 2021) 
• Using AHRQ’s SOPS® Hospital Survey and Workplace Safety Item Set: Experiences From a State Hospital Association (Webcast) — (May 23, 2024)

SOPS® Hospital Survey & Workplace Safety Item Set: Experiences From a State Hospital Association (59:41:00)