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To understand what level of awareness health professionals working in a hospital of Northern Italy had of the patient safety culture by using the Italian version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire and also validate its use in this setting. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire was developed by the Agency for Health Research and Quality in 2008 and validated by several studies. Therefore, we decided to test the Italian version of this tool to see if it could be used effectively to measure and appraise patient safety culture also in Italy. Survey. To check the validity of the questionnaire, we applied the continued comparison and the global data treatment methods. Of the 1008 questionnaires we administered, 724 (71%) were returned. The majority of the questions were answered (mean 98, SD 3·4%). From a Chi-square test on the consistency of the answers, we found that six of the 12 perspectives we explored had a high level of significance, whereas in the other six, the differences in the answers were just casual. The Italian version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture questionnaire allowed us to assess health professionals' awareness of patient safety culture and thus validate the effectiveness of this tool. The findings of our survey could be useful to design an objective tool that would allow the five health professional groups involved in the study (directors/coordinators, physicians, nurses/midwives, physiotherapists and technicians) gain a better knowledge of the patient safety culture and thus improve the quality of clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]