Advancing interprofessional patient safety education for medical, nursing, and pharmacy learners during clinical rotations

ABSTRACT

Clinical errors are common and can lead to adverse events and patient death. Health professionals must work within interprofessional teams to provide safe and effective care to patients, yet current curricula is lacking with regards to interprofessional education and patient safety. We describe the development and implementation of an interprofessional course aimed at medical, nursing, and pharmacy learners during their clinical training at a large academic medical centre. The course objectives were based on core competencies for interprofessional education and patient safety. The course was offered as recurring three 1-hour sessions, including case-based discussions and a mock root cause analysis. Forty-three students attended at least one session over a 7-month period. We performed a cross-sectional survey of participants to assess readiness for interprofessional learning and a before and after comparison of patient safety knowledge. All students reported a high level of readiness for interprofessional learning, indicating an interest in interprofessional opportunities. In general, understanding and knowledge of the four competency domains in patient safety was low before the course and 100% of students reported an increase in knowledge in these domains after participating in the course.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum development
• interprofessional education
• patient safety
• surveys

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Funding

The authors were awarded a seed grant from their university’s Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Institute for the development and implementation of this educational pilot program.

Notes

1. Course materials available at: https://sites.google.com/a/umaryland.edu/patient-safety-and-quality-improvement-at-the-point-of-care/

Additional information

Funding

The authors were awarded a seed grant from their university’s Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Institute for the development and implementation of this educational pilot program.