Patient safety in healthcare preregistration educational curricula: multiple case study-based investigations of eight medicine, nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy university courses

Abstract

Consideration needs to be given to the appointment of curriculum leads for patient safety who should be encouraged to work strategically across disciplines and topic areas; development of stronger links with organisational systems to promote student engagement with organisation-based patient safety practice; and role models should help students to make connections between theoretical considerations and routine clinical care.

A UK Perspective on Human Factors and Patient Safety Education in Pharmacy Curricula

“…The authors conclude that the skills gap needs to be addressed, which a number of the other studies agreed with. 5,27,32 However, the observation that perception of competence does not necessarily reflect reality raises the point that accurate measurement of competency is critical.…”

“…26 There was also relatively little information about the content and delivery of patient safety teaching, although some studies reported that there was little in the way of interprofessional patient safety teaching. 5 Health professions are at different stages, as evidenced by the disproportionate number of studies involving medicine, but this is further complicated by a teaching "skills-gap." This was illustrated in the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project.…”

“…5 Few validated tools could be applied in this context. Existing tools measure impact of specific interventions and have not been rigorously validity-tested.…”

“…In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a patient safety curriculum for educational staff, but little is known about how education providers ensure learners develop patient safety competencies and even less about teaching HFE principles. 5,[11][12][13][14][15][16] In Scotland, 15% of hospital admissions are drugrelated and preventable with over half resulting from monitoring and/or prescribing errors. 17 While these errors have complex causality, the pharmacist represents a key point in the error chain.…”

“….of a highly complex sequence of actions by multiple people and technologies." 5 One challenge is to understand the systems that produce safety-related outcomes and the cultures that influence the behavior of the "actors" within these systems. Recognition of harm as an outcome suggests that the primary goal should be to design and maintain work systems that support good performance.…”