SOPS Nursing Home Survey: Measuring What Matters: SOPS Tools Capture Nursing Home Staff Views on Safety Culture

SOPS Nursing Home Survey: AHRQ released the Surveys on Patient Safety Culture® (SOPS®) Nursing Home Survey to assess staff perceptions about patient safety culture in their nursing home in 2008. In 2025, AHRQ released a new version, the SOPS Nursing Home Survey 2.0. This new version removed all negatively worded items, shortened the survey from 44 items to 25 items (12 composite measures in 1.0 compared to 8 composite measures in 2.0), added items or revised item wording, added a new composite measure “Speaking Up”, and updated the background questions. AHRQ’s Surveys on Patient Safety Culture® (SOPS®) provide a standardized approach to enable healthcare facilities, researchers and policymakers to assess staff perceptions of patient safety culture in healthcare settings nationwide. The SOPS Program recently introduced updates to the Nursing Home Survey including a revised core survey, pilot test findings and updated results from the Workplace Safety Supplemental Items. The new SOPS Nursing Home Survey 2.0 is shorter than the original 2008 survey, reducing the number of items from 44 to 25 while maintaining core areas such as Staffing, Handoffs and Information Exchange and Management Support. It also includes Speaking Up, which assesses whether staff feel comfortable voicing safety concerns. A pilot test was conducted in 2024 with 1,341 respondents across 27 nursing homes, including administrators, nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, therapists and support staff. Among the findings: Speaking Up about safety concerns received the highest score at 86 percent positive, while staffing received the lowest score at 54 percent positive, reflecting ongoing concerns about workforce shortages and time constraints. Only 65 percent of respondents gave their nursing home an overall safety rating of Excellent or Very Good. Updated results from the 2025 Workplace Safety Supplemental Items reflect input from 3,683 staff across 72 nursing homes. These items, which are meant to complement the SOPS Nursing Home Survey by focusing on staff workplace safety culture, show mixed results. For example, 89 percent of respondents felt adequately equipped to move patients safely, but only 57 percent positively rated interactions among staff. https://www.ahrq.gov/sops/databases/nursing-home/index.html