Abstract
Objectives
Quality and safety in healthcare are of the utmost importance, but little is known about whether undergraduate students are aware of patient safety concepts. The objectives of our study were to assess the perception of medical students of challenges in patient safety, and collect their perceptions of error management and prevention.
Methods
This study used an exploratory mixed method strategy. The first study phase collected data from semi-structured interviews of 28 students. Based on this, an online survey was constructed and sent to about 80,000 medical students in Germany. 1053 replies were received and analyzed for responses based on gender, curriculum type (problem based [PBC] vs. science based curriculum [SBC]) and years of training.
Results
Most students understand the importance of patient safety, error avoidance, and the challenges of patient safety interventions. Four themes were identified: (a) the culture of patient safety (what is a good doctor? Doctors’ responsibility), (b) the working environment (the inevitability of mistakes, high work load, hierarchy, competition, teamwork), (c) the challenges of risk reduction (error avoidance, management, skills), and (d) materialistic issue (income vs. humanistic values). Female students were more risk aware than male students. Sixteen percent of students expect negative effects (e.g. punishment) when medical errors were disclosed in a team. Regardless, >70% regard teamwork as an effective error avoidance measure. Error disclosure willingness was high (89.7%).
Conclusions
Although not formally part of the curriculum, students had a positive perspective concerning patient safety. The opportunities and challenges for incorporating patient safety content into the training curriculum were identified and presented.
Funding source: Kreiskliniken Reutlingen GmbH
Award Identifier / Grant number: UW/H 11.540
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Research funding: Kreiskliniken Reutlingen GmbH, Reutlingen, Germany. Grant No.: UW/H 11.540.
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Author contributions: Adrian Gillissen (AG) and Jan Eherls analyzed and interpreted the qualitative data (student interviews). AG was the major contributor in writing the manuscript. Tonja Kochanek translated the German citations of the qualitative study part into English and was responsible for the organization of the quantitative study part. Michaela Zupanic did the statistics on the quantitative study part. All authors reviewed the analysis and the final text. All authors read and approved the final manuscript for submission.
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Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study. All participants of the qualitative study part agreed further to the audio recording either verbally or in written form. Confidentiality was warranted through an anonymization process.
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Ethics approval: Research involving human subjects complied with all relevant national regulations and institutional policies. The study was performed in accordance with the Declarations of Helsinki. Ethical approval of the study was obtained prior to the first interview from the University Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry Committee for Ethics at the University Witten-Herdecke (# 137/2919).
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2022-0072).
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorials
- An equation for excellence in clinical reasoning
- Quantifying diagnostic excellence
- Review
- A scoping review of distributed cognition in acute care clinical decision-making
- Opinion Papers
- Context matters: toward a multilevel perspective on context in clinical reasoning and error
- Occam’s razor and Hickam’s dictum: a dermatologic perspective
- Original Articles
- Differences in clinical reasoning between female and male medical students
- Introducing second-year medical students to diagnostic reasoning concepts and skills via a virtual curriculum
- Bad things can happen: are medical students aware of patient centered care and safety?
- Impact of diagnostic checklists on the interpretation of normal and abnormal electrocardiograms
- Cerebrospinal fluid lactate as a predictive biomarker for tuberculous meningitis diagnosis
- Empowering quality data – the Gordian knot of bringing real innovation into healthcare system
- Collective intelligence improves probabilistic diagnostic assessments
- Why people fail to participate in annual skin cancer screening: creation of the perceptions of annual skin cancer screening scale (PASCSS)
- Instructions on appropriate fasting prior to phlebotomy; effects on patient awareness, preparation, and biochemical parameters
- Clinician factors associated with delayed diagnosis of appendicitis
- Real-world assessment of the clinical performance of COVID-VIRO ALL IN rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen test
- Lack of a prompt normalization of immunological parameters is associated with long-term care and poor prognosis in COVID-19 affected patients receiving convalescent plasma: a single center experience
- Letters to the Editor
- Uncontrolled confounding in COVID-19 epidemiology
- VAPES: a new mnemonic for considering paroxysmal disorders
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