Background and purpose: The basic responsibility of nurses is to maintain patient safety including notifying patients and colleagues about risk and risk reduction methods, supporting the patient safety and reporting events to a responsible person. Without creating a safety culture in all health facilities a sustainable development in the patient care do not occur. This study aims to determine the patient safety culture in teaching hospitals in Gorgan.

Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional study, a target group includes nurses at 5 Azar, Taleghani and Deziani Hospitals in Gorgan in 2011. The study population included 348 nurses in these hospitals. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire with 43 questions. Statistical tests were ANOVA and T-Test.

Results: Twenty four percent of nurses believed patient safety culture is weak, 46.8% of them, moderate and 30.7% good. The weakest dimension was non-punitive response to error and strongest dimension was organizational education. Statistic test showed significant relationship between patient safety culture and experience (p= 0.021), employment status (p= 0.001), hospital (p= 0.001), ward (p= 0.003).

Conclusion: The status of the patient safety culture was related moderate from the nurses' view point but it is necessary it improved in dimensions of the non-punitive response and the staff workload to note that it is highly recommended to take some actions in this regard.