Validation of a survey tool to assess the patient safety attitudes of pharmacy students

Abstract

ObjectivePatient safety education is a key strategy to minimise harm, and is increasingly being introduced into junior pharmacy curricula. However, currently there is no valid and reliable survey tool to measure the patient safety attitudes of pharmacy students. This study aimed to validate a modified survey tool, originally developed by Madigosky et al, to evaluate patient safety attitudes of junior pharmacy students.DesignA 23-item cross-sectional patient safety survey tool was utilised to evaluate first and second year pharmacy students’ attitudes during May 2013 with both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses performed to understand the psychometric properties of the survey tool and to establish construct validity.SettingUndergraduate university students in Sydney, AustraliaParticipants245 first year and 201 second year students enrolled in the Bachelor of Pharmacy Programme at The University of Sydney, Australia in May 2013.ResultsAfter exploratory factor analysis on first year student responses (55.76% variance explained) and confirmatory factor analysis on second year responses, a 5-factor model consisting of 14 items was obtained with satisfactory model fit (χ2 (66)=112.83, p<0.001, RMSEA=0.06, CFI=0.91) and nesting between year groups (Δχ2(7)=3.079, p=0.878). The five factors measured students’ attitudes towards: (1) being quality improvement focused, (2) internalising errors regardless of harm, (3) value of contextual learning, (4) acceptability of questioning more senior healthcare professionals’ behaviour and (5) attitude towards open disclosure.ConclusionsThis study has established the reliability and validity of a modified survey tool to evaluate patient safety attitudes of pharmacy students, with the potential for use in course development and evaluation.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a peer-led education intervention to improve the patient safety attitudes of junior pharmacy students: a cross-sectional study using a latent growth curve modelling approach

“…Comparisons between demographic characteristics and survey item responses showed that none of the measured demographic characteristics were associated with any of the responses to the survey items. 17 …”

“…First-year and second-year pharmacy students’ patient safety attitudes were evaluated using a previously validated 23-item survey based on the Patient Safety/Medical Fallibility Curriculum Survey developed by Madigosky et al . 5 17 The survey consisted of two sections. The first section contained 17 of the 18 attitudinal items of the original Patient Safety/Medical Fallibility Curriculum Survey , 5 with items related to the reporting of errors split into two items to evaluate attitudinal differences in the presence or absence of patient harm.…”

“…From the previous validation study of the survey tool, confirmatory factor analysis identified four attitudinal domains which could be measured by the survey: willingness to undertake quality improvement activities (QI), likelihood to internalise errors (IE), willingness to question other healthcare professional's behaviours (QB) and willingness to the open disclosure of errors to patients (OD). 17 Based on the validated factor structure, factor-based weighted sum scores for each of the attitudinal domains were calculated. 18 List wise deletion of cases with missing data was performed to ensure a complete data set for analysis due to student attrition.…”

Enhancing generational change in patient safety attitudes through peer leadership

“…Attitudes were assessed using a 23 item modified version of the Patient Safety/Medical Fallibility Curriculum Survey for pharmacy students, originally developed by Madigosky et al 10 11. A five-point Likert-type scale was used to measure student attitudes, with possible responses ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’.…”

“…A five-point Likert-type scale was used to measure student attitudes, with possible responses ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. A previous validation study among pharmacy students11 identified four attitudinal factors that could be measured by the survey: being quality improvement focused; internalising errors rather than taking action; the acceptability of questioning more senior healthcare professionals' behaviours; and attitudes towards the open disclosure of errors. In order to evaluate changes in attitudes, factor-based scores were first calculated at each time point using the confirmed factor model from the validation study11 followed by repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with pairwise comparisons to evaluate when changes in peer leaders' patient safety attitudes occurred.…”