The pre-registration nursing students’ perspectives on patient safety education: a descriptive study

Abstract

Incorporating patient safety principles into preregistration nursing curriculum is necessary to support widespread adoption of safe practice. Although patient safety has been discussed on a European and global level in emphasizing the importance of socio-cultural competencies, students’ perception and the extent to which patient safety elements are addressed in the curriculum is unclear and hidden. To understand the current status of patient safety awareness among pre-registration nursing students, in the classroom and clinical setting, a descriptive-comparative study was conducted with three and four-year undergraduate nursing students from Greece and Cyprus (n=485) during the 2017-2018 academic year. All students were surveyed using a 34-item Health Professional Education Patient safety Survey (H-PEPSS), (Likert scale 1=fully disagree to 5=fully agree), to assess students’ learning in both settings and how broader patient safety issues are addressed in the nursing curriculum. The results showed that students expressed the highest level of confidence in the classroom (mean=4) compared with the clinical setting (mean= 3.7). The clinical aspects exhibited the highest level of confidence in both settings while the least level of confidence expressed was in the topic “working in teams”. A statistically significant positive correlation was seen between the classroom and clinical settings for all seven patient safety topics. Students’ confidence in what they were learning regarding patient safety increase significantly from 3 year to 4 year students in the topics of “clinical aspects” and “managing safety risks”. The mean score for patient safety issues addressed was 3.6. The findings showed that deficits exist in adequately preparing undergraduate students with the skills related to patient safety issues. The study illustrated the value of collaboration between the two settings. The highest score in the topic of ‘’clinical safety’’ (in both settings) which was primarily on hand hygiene and infection control, may reflect the fact that nursing education tends to focus on clinical safety issues, rather than the more sociocultural aspects of patient safety