Introduction. Patient safety is a topic of growing interest since it directly influences the quality of health care, this being a fundamental principle of health services. Dental practice is immersed in this topic since its field work is the human being and is subject to the conscious or unconscious production of unfavorable health events; especially with technological growth and the complexity of procedures that generates an increased risk of presenting adverse events. Objective: To investigate the perception of barriers and facilitators of the patient safety program from the perspective of administrative and health care personnel in university dental clinics. Methods: qualitative study with ethnographic approach, using 4 focus groups and 14 semi-structured interviews in a public and a private institution, located in Cali (Colombia), for 2020 and 2021. The administrative theory of quality in health services was used, adapting Donabedian's model. Results: 21 factors were found to be influential in the development of patient safety programs, according to the perceptions of the study participants. The factors were grouped into two categories: structure and organizational processes; with five subcategories: internal factors of the institution, institutional context, individual staff factors, patient factors, and work team factors. Seven factors were identified as facilitators, two constituted some barrier, and twelve functioned as a barrier or facilitators depending on institutional development. Conclusions: There are several factors that affect patient safety in university dental clinics, and they become from the perspective of health administration in opportunities for improvement that require initiatives by decision makers in health services to design and implement adequate patient safety programs. This study provides a broad understanding of the difficulties and potential solutions to meet the challenges of patient safety programs in dental services.