Food Safety Culture in Healthcare Foodservice Operations

Introduction: Hospitals and other healthcare foodservice departments serve significant numbers of people who are most susceptible to foodborne illnesses. It is extremely important to provide adequate food safety training for the workers to ensure the safety of food served in healthcare institutions.  Even though it has been shown that food safety training can increase knowledge, this knowledge does not necessarily change food handling practices.  Food safety culture has been proposed as a better way to change the behaviors and to create more effective food safety systems.  By changing employee behavior, foodservice workers will ultimately be providing safer food and may reduce the risk of foodborne disease to patients, staff and guests.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to determine what factors are needed to create a positive food safety culture in healthcare foodservice departments from the management perspective. 

Methods: Managers and supervisors from selected healthcare foodservice facilities were given an online version of the Food Safety Climate Tool modified for healthcare foodservice departments.  Participants rated 38 items using a 5-point Likert-type scale, 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).  Items were related to five food safety areas: (1) management commitment to food safety (leadership and resource allocation); (2) work unit commitment to food safety (supervisor, co-worker and personal commitment); (3) food safety training; (4) infrastructure for food safety (food safety management system and production practices); and (5) worker food safety behavior.

Results: The most important factors for developing a food safety culture in healthcare were management commitment and foodservice worker behavior.  It was also found that management must allocate resources through training, provide adequate tools (thermometers, food labels), and exhibit signs of active management control within the foodservice operation.  

Significance: Utilization of these results will help develop tools for foodservice managers to create improved food safety culture and help improve compliance of foodservice workers to follow proper food handling practices.