Adverse events are often encountered in surgical intensive care units (ICUs), and most of them occur due to preventable errors. Establishment of a patient safety culture is recommended for preventing and reducing these errors.

This study was performed to investigate the relationship between surgical ICU nurses' patient safety culture and adverse events.

This was a cross‐sectional descriptive study.

The study was performed in the surgical ICUs of four university hospitals in Izmir province, Turkey and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by an Ethics Committee. The sample comprised 113 nurses working in the surgical ICUs of the hospitals between November 2018 and February 2019. Data were collected using a questionnaire that comprised a demographic form, adverse events form, and patient safety culture hospital questionnaire. Student's t test, one‐way analysis of variance, and logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate the data. P values <.05 were considered significant.

At the end of the study, nurses' level of patient safety culture was found to be intermediate (65.5%), with the highest average positive response rate (PRR) obtained for teamwork within the units (65.5%) and the lowest average PRR obtained for the frequency of adverse event reporting (25.3%). There was a significant correlation between patient safety culture and adverse events (r = 0.027, P < .05).

Surgical ICUs nurses' level of patient safety culture was average, and there was a significant correlation between patient safety culture and adverse events.

Managers should establish a reliable system for reporting adverse events and encourage ICU nurses to report them. It is very important to adopt a non‐punitive approach at instances when an adverse event is reported.