BackgroundPatient safety training often provides learners with a health professional's perspective rather than the patient's. Personal narratives of health-related harm allow patients to share their stories with health professionals to influence clinical behaviour by rousing emotions and improving attitudes to safety.AimThis study measured the impact of patient narratives used to train junior doctors in patient safety.MethodsAn open, multi-centre, two-arm, parallel design randomised controlled trial was conducted in the North Yorkshire East Coast Foundation School (NYECFS). The intervention consisted of 1-h-long patient narratives followed by discussion. The control arm received conventional faculty-delivered teaching. The Attitude to Patient Safety Questionnaire (APSQ) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were used to measure the impact of the intervention.Results142 trainees received the intervention; 141 the control teaching. There was no evidence of a difference in post-intervention APSQ scores between the groups. There was a statistically significant difference in the underlying distribution of both post PA (positive affect) and post NA (negative affect) scores between the groups on the PANAS (p<0.001) with indications of both higher PA and NA scores in the intervention group.ConclusionsInvolving patients with experiences of safety incidents in training has an ideological appeal and seems an obvious choice in designing safety interventions. On the basis of our primary outcome measure, we were unable to demonstrate effectiveness of the intervention in changing general attitudes to safety compared to control. While the intervention may impact on emotional engagement and learning about communication, we remain uncertain whether this will translate into improved behaviours in the clinical context or indeed if there are any negative effects.Trial registration numberGrant reference no. RP-PG-0108-10049.

Background: Training in patient safety is an important element of medical education. Most educational interventions on patient safety training adopt a 'health-professional lens' with limited consideration on the impact of safety lapses on the patient and their families and little or no involvement of patients in the design or delivery of the training. Aims: This paper describes a pilot study to test the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a patient-led educational intervention to facilitate safety training amongst newly qualified doctors. Method: Patients and/or carers who had experienced harm during their care shared narratives of their stories with trainees; this was followed by a focused discussion on patient safety issues exploring the causes and consequences of safety incidents and lessons to be learned from these. Results: The intervention, which will be further tested in an NIHR-funded randomised controlled trial (RCT), was successfully implemented into an existing training programme and found acceptance amongst the patients and trainees. Conclusion: The pilot study proved to be a useful step in refining the intervention for the RCT including identifying appropriate outcome measures and highlighting organisational issues.

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