Patient safety education to change medical students' attitudes and sense of responsibility

Abstract

Aims: This study examined changes in the perceptions and attitudes as well as the sense of individual and collective responsibility in medical students after they received patient safety education.

Method: A three-day patient safety curriculum was implemented for third-year medical students shortly before entering their clerkship. Before and after training, we administered a questionnaire, which was analysed quantitatively. Additionally, we asked students to answer questions about their expected behaviours in response to two case vignettes. Their answers were analysed qualitatively.

Results: There was improvement in students' concepts of patient safety after training. Before training, they showed good comprehension of the inevitability of error, but most students blamed individuals for errors and expressed a strong sense of individual responsibility. After training, students increasingly attributed errors to system dysfunction and reported more self-confidence in speaking up about colleagues' errors. However, due to the hierarchical culture, students still described difficulties communicating with senior doctors.

Conclusions: Patient safety education effectively shifted students' attitudes towards systems-based thinking and increased their sense of collective responsibility. Strategies for improving superior-subordinate communication within a hierarchical culture should be added to the patient safety curriculum.

Acknowledgements

We thank our students and educators for their enthusiastic participation in the patient safety curriculum. We gratefully acknowledge the support of administrative staff in the survey and data transcription.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.