Learning to ensure patient safety in clinical settings: comparing Finnish and British nursing students’ perceptions

Abstract

Health care organisations and professionals with responsibilities for patient safety should seek to standardise the preparation of nursing students incorporating requisite international standards and benchmarks.

Adverse events witnessed by nursing students during clinical learning experiences: Findings from a longitudinal study

“…According to our findings, combining multiple teaching and learning strategies aimed at supporting nursing students to develop confidence on PS issues, by also developing a closer academic–clinical partnership, has been considered to increase immediate disclosure, and therefore, debriefing sessions on PS events (Wu, Enskär, Pua, Heng, & Wang, ). Moreover, it is also important to adopt well‐established teaching and learning methods for PS competence improvement by ensuring that PS disclosure is embodied among nursing professional standards, current legislation, and nursing responsibility (Tella et al, ).…”

Understanding the knowledge gaps in whistleblowing and speaking up in health care: narrative reviews of the research literature and formal inquiries, a legal analysis and stakeholder interviews

“…However, there is little empirical research in the field of health care specifically examining nationality as a factor in whistleblowing. Tella et al 124,129 found that UK nursing students considered themselves better prepared for reporting on problems in relation to patient safety than their Finnish counterparts, and Tabak et al 130 noted that knowledge of the concept of whistleblowing was relatively underdeveloped in Israel compared with the UK, although it was reported that the same moral imperative to care for patients existed in both countries. Skivenes and Trygstad 131 discussed research carried out by the Norwegian government on whistleblowing in the broader public sector, which suggests that, in contrast to the findings of many international studies, Norwegians generally had very positive experiences of whistleblowing, reporting constructive responses when reporting problems to employers.…”

“…Enabling trainee health-care workers to judge where the line is drawn in terms of delineating poor care from adequate care is considered fundamental to nurse training, with many authors contributing to the general discussion on this. 96,104,122,124,129 Ion et al 86 argue that student nurses often lack confidence in their own judgement, and Bickhoff et al…”

“…85,87,90,91,102 This advocacy role has been recognised as a crucial part of a nurses' training, 109,122,124 and perceived as fundamental to helping nurses recognise when care is poor. Ion et al 99 note the natural human tendency to describe oneself in the most positive light, leading whistleblowers to claim to be strong characters, whereas non-whistleblowers blame factors outside their control for their failure to report, perhaps suggesting that, at some level of consciousness, nurses understand and believe that their primary responsibility is to the patient.…”

“…St Pierre et al 123 Tella et al 124 In this section, then, we surface the most significant of the factors that have been suggested as influencing the whistleblowing process as these have emerged in the empirical health-care literature. To facilitate the ordering of our findings, we have categorised the factors affecting whistleblowing into three broad areas, although there is necessarily a degree of overlap among these:…”