Background: As patient safety is increasingly recognized by the public, especially the sense of self-determination of patients, the World Health Organization (WHO) and many European countries are paying much more attention to patient safety, and so does China. Objectives: To survey and analyze the current situation of clinician’s knowledge of patient safety in China by surveying the clinical doctors through questionnaires, and to provide the basic evidence in the field so as to promote the activities in the country. Methods: We developed a survey and listed 18 patient safety terminologies with three kinds of choices: ‘‘completely understanding’’, ‘‘some understanding’’, ‘‘not understanding’’. The survey was distributed to clinical doctors in West China Hospital at Sichuan University in 2007 with a group of volunteer medical students. SPASS and MS Excel were used to analysis the data. Results: 273 questionnaires were distributed at random of which 259 were completed with some items left blank. Over 80% of the respondents were above high school education. For five of the 18 terminologies, the proportion of answering ‘‘completely understand’’ is much lower than for the others (almost less than 20%). These five terminologies are: ‘‘near miss’’ (13.55% completely understanding; 52.58% some understanding; 33.86% not understanding); ‘‘system error’’ (16.33% completely understanding; 37.85% some understanding; 45.82% not understanding); ‘‘risk management’’ (13.23% completely understanding; 37.35% some understanding; 49.42% not understanding); ‘‘root cause analysis’’ (15.95% completely understanding; 42.41% some understanding; 41.63% not understanding); ‘‘potential adverse drug event’’ (21.01% completely understanding; 54.09% some understanding; 24.90% not understanding). Doctors were familiar with the remaining patient safety terminologies. Conclusions: From this study, we found that the doctors average level of understanding ‘patient safety’ is satisfactory. Because safety is a fundamental principle of patient care, any medical service should focus on this point, and as the conception of patients safety is increasing, more and more relevant research will be conducted in near future.