Medical students’ perception of patient safety – and what they learn about it

Abstract

In the thesis “Medical students’ perception of patient safety - and what they learn about it” the hypothesis has been that most medical students have experienced breaches in patient safety during their clinical training, but that this is not covered in the medical school curricula. To investigate this further, a survey was distributed to medical students at the four Norwegian medical schools, as well as to a cohort of interns (turnusleger) evaluating their perceptions of medical errors. In addition a review of the curriculum at the four Norwegian Medical Schools was performed to investigate what they teach on this subject. Furthermore, a literature search in PubMed was performed to obtain examples on how different medical schools have implemented patient safety into their curriculum and how they have evaluated it.

We found that over half of the Norwegian medical students and interns who participated in the study had witnessed an error in the treatment of a patient. Almost half of the participants reported that they had changed their view of the practice of medicine due to their experiences with health care. The low response rate of 16% makes it difficult to confirm our hypothesis that the majority have experience with medical errors. A lack of education in patient safety was identified at three out of four Norwegian medical faculties, with the exception being the University of Oslo which has a patient safety curriculum integrated in six out of 12 semesters, with some mandatory assignments.

Based on the literature, there are many novel approaches to the implementation of patient safety topics into undergraduate medical education, but it is hard to evaluate the effect of the interventions. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a curriculum guide for medical schools, aiming to aid in the implementation and this provides a framework for educators looking for inspiration of how this can be done.