The Speaking Up Climates for Safety (SUC-Safe) and Professionalism (SUC-Prof) Scales were developed by William Martinez, Jason Etchegaray, Eric Thomas, Lisa Lehmann, and Sigall Bell with funding from the Gold Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and the National Institutes of Health. The standard citation for the scales is: Martinez W, Etchegaray JM, Thomas EJ, Hickson GB, Lehmann LS, Schleyer AM, Best JA, Shelburne JT, May NB, Bell SK. ‘Speaking up’ about patient safety concerns and unprofessional behaviour among residents: validation of two scales. BMJ Qual Saf 2015;24:671-680.

• Speaking Up Climate for Professionalism (SUC-Prof) Scale
  (Version One, 2015)
• Speaking Up Climate for Patient Safety (SUC-Safe) Scale
  (Version One, 2015)
• Frequently Asked Questions

Permission

We consider the SUC-Safe and SUC-Prof scales to be publicly available.   You are free to download and use the scales in your research and/or to assess these dimensions of patient safety culture in a healthcare setting.  We do ask, however, that you cite the scales correctly if and when you use them.  In addition, we do appreciate knowing and being able to track the different ways our scales are being used. We appreciate emails letting us know how you plan to use the scale and letting us know your experience after using them.  Please email William Martinez, MD, MS, at william.martinez@vanderbilt.edu.

Scoring

All scale items are measured on a 5-point Likert scale from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (5).

The negatively worded item (*) should be reverse coded, so that higher scores represent more positive perceptions for all scale items.

When used in conjunction with the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ), a summary score for either speaking up climate scale (SUC-Safe or SUC-Prof) may be computed in the same manner as the domains of the SAQ (SAQ Domain Computation Instructions) using the following formula: scale score = (mean of the scale items – 1) x 25. Thus, summary scores range from 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

When used in conjunction with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Surveys on Patient Safety Culture, a summary score for either speaking up climate scale (SUC-Safe or SUC-Prof) may be computed in the same manner as the dimensions of AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Cultures (see AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, HSOPS, User’s Guide).