A safety practice for patients is an essential basic of health service systems, especially anesthetic service for severe patients. According to the previous study, there is an incidence of unsafe patients under anesthesia. Therefore, the head nurse anesthetists’ safety management and the knowledge of nurse anesthetists’ safety practices for patients under anesthesia are crucial.

Objective: The purposes of this descriptive correlational research were to study 1) the level of head nurse anesthetists’ safety management for patients under anesthesia, 2) the level of nurse anesthetists’ safety practices for patients under anesthesia, and 3) the correlation between head nurse anesthetists’ safety management and nurse anesthetists’ safety practices for patients under anesthesia, in secondary and tertiary hospitals, southern Thailand.

Material and Method: Recruitment 176 nurse anesthetists who cooperated with head nurse anesthetists more than one year by simple random sampling without replacement from secondary and tertiary hospital in the southern Thailand. The questionnaire was designed by the researcher and comprised of 3 parts: 1) the general data form, 2) the head nurse anesthetists, safety management for patients under anesthesia questionnaire, and 3) the nurse anesthetists’ safety practices for patients under anesthesia questionnaire. The questionnaires parts 2 and 3 was validated by three experts, yielding content validity indices of 0.88 and 0.89 respectively and was examined using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient giving values of 0.97 and 0.94 respectively. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and Pearson’s production moment correlation coefficient.

Results: The results showed that mean total score of head nurse anesthetists’ safety management for patients under anesthesia was at a good level (mean=3.54, standard deviation=0.58). The mean score of nurse anesthetists’ safety practices for patients under anesthesia was at a good level (mean=4.42, standard deviation=0.41). Head nurse anesthetists’ safety management for patients under anesthesia and nurse anesthetists’ safety practices for patients under anesthesia as perceived by nurse anesthetists showed a statistically significant positive correlation at a very low level (r=.22, p<0.05).

Conclusion: These results can be used as a guideline to improve the quality of safety management of head nurse anesthetists and safety practices of nurse anesthetists for patients under anesthesia.