Patient safety education for undergraduate medical students: a systematic review

Abstract

BackgroundTo reduce harm caused by health care is a global priority. Medical students should be able to recognize unsafe conditions, systematically report errors and near misses, investigate and improve such systems with a thorough understanding of human fallibility, and disclose errors to patients. Incorporating the knowledge of how to do this into the medical student curriculum is an urgent necessity. This paper aims to systematically review the literature about patient safety education for undergraduate medical students in terms of its content, teaching strategies, faculty availability and resources provided so as to identify evidence on how to promote patient safety in the curriculum for medical schools. This paper includes a perspective from the faculty of a medical school, a major hospital and an Evidence Based Medicine Centre in Sichuan Province, China.MethodsWe searched MEDLINE, ERIC, Academic Source Premier(ASP), EMBASE and three Chinese Databases (Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, CBM; China National Knowledge Infrastructure, CNKI; Wangfang Data) from 1980 to Dec. 2009. The pre-specified form of inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed for literature screening. The quality of included studies was assessed using Darcy Reed and Gemma Flores-Mateo criteria. Two reviewers selected the studies, undertook quality assessment, and data extraction independently. Differing opinions were resolved by consensus or with help from the third person.ResultsThis was a descriptive study of a total of seven studies that met the selection criteria. There were no relevant Chinese studies to be included. Only one study included patient safety education in the medical curriculum and the remaining studies integrated patient safety into clinical rotations or medical clerkships. Seven studies were of a pre and post study design, of which there was only one controlled study. There was considerable variation in relation to contents, teaching strategies, faculty knowledge and background in patient safety, other resources and outcome evaluation in these reports. The outcomes from including patient safety in the curriculum as measured by medical students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes varied between the studies.ConclusionsThere are only a few relevant published studies on the inclusion of patient safety education into the undergraduate curriculum in medical schools either as a selective course, a lecture program, or by being integrated into the existing curriculum even in developed countries with advanced health and education systems. The integration of patient safety education into the existing curriculum in medical schools internationally, provides significant challenges.

Higienização das mãos e a segurança do paciente: perspectiva de docentes e universitários

“…All members of multiprofessional health care teams, including students, should be capable of identifying risk situations, providing notification of errors and adverse events in a systematic manner, analyzing the system and disclosuring the occurrence of such events to patients and family members, thereby contributing to promote safe and quality care, as they have the proper training, orientation and support. [6][7] Standard precautions were established in 1996 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA to be adopted during the care of all patients, regardless their diagnosis. 8 The recommended measures include hand hygiene and the use of individual protection equipment.…”

A Scoping Review of Peer-led Education in Patient Safety Training

“…Small group learning has been the most commonly used teaching model in patient safety education. 2,6 This is most likely due to it being a less resource-intensive method, with patient safety workshops, tutorials or problem-based learning cases easily inserted into existing curricula. Although this method is quite effective for use in a single discipline, it has been shown that multi-disciplinary small group workshops that are implemented toward the end of a health care professional degree program can be of greater benefit, particularly enabling better teamwork and communication.…”

“…4 To date, the delivery of patient safety education has centered on didactic methods of teaching, 2 and although this method is useful in increasing knowledge, it appears to be less effective in changing the attitudes and practices of students and health care professionals. As more systems-based approaches to managing errors in care have been adopted, so have the pedagogical methods in teaching students, graduates and health care professionals about safety and quality improvement.…”

“…Since the late 1990s, higher education institutions have attempted to implement specific patient safety and quality improvement education as part of their health professional training programs. 2 However, making changes to established curricula can be challenging, especially when institutions lack resources and appropriate staff with experience or knowledge in patient safety science. 3 To address this global issue, the World Health Organization developed the Patient Safety Curriculum Guide for Medical Schools in 2009, which was based on the Australian National Patient Safety Education Framework.…”

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

“…2,12,13,25 Where formal educational activities were described, they were mostly single modules rather than embedded curricula. 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.…”