The Patient Safety Curriculum for Undergraduate Medical Students as a First Step Toward Improving Patient Safety

Objective Despite the growing emphasis on patient safety and the need for patient safety education, few schools have included this subject in their curriculum. Medical students need to understand and demonstrate appropriate patient safety skills early and continuously in their professional education...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of surgical education 2012-09, Vol.69 (5), p.659-664
Main Authors: Myung, Sun Jung, MD, Shin, Jwa-Seop, MD, PhD, Kim, Ji Hyung, MA, Roh, HyeRin, MD, Kim, Yoon, MD, Kim, Jeongeun, Lee, Sang-il, MD, Lee, Jae-Ho, MD, Kim, Suk Wha, MD
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Curriculum
curriculum development
Education, Medical, Undergraduate
Humans
Interpersonal and Communication Skills
medical education
medical error
Medical Knowledge
Patient Care
patient safety
Patient Safety - standards
Practice Based Learning and Improvement
Professionalism
Quality Improvement
Surgery
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Objective Despite the growing emphasis on patient safety and the need for patient safety education, few schools have included this subject in their curriculum. Medical students need to understand and demonstrate appropriate patient safety skills early and continuously in their professional education. Therefore, we introduced a week of patient safety curriculum as a pilot program and attempted to describe and evaluate the effectiveness of a patient safety curriculum for second-year medical students. Design, Setting, Participants A 1-week patient safety course was developed and taught to all second-year medical students as part of an existing patient–doctor society course. The curriculum was composed of interactive lecture, discussion, and small-group debriefing facilitated by a tutor dealing with topics about patient safety. Students were asked to complete questionnaires on awareness about patient safety before and after the curriculum. Results The comparison of questionnaire data obtained before and after the curriculum revealed that the students' awareness about patient safety was significantly increased. Among them, awareness of the frequency of medical errors made by physicians and the awareness of the adverse outcomes due to medical errors were remarkably changed. Conclusions These findings suggest that a patient safety course could increase the medical students' awareness of patient safety and the reality of medical errors. Continued development and implementation of patient safety curriculum will make medical students, as future doctors and health-care leaders, prepared to better practice and offer safer health care services than ever.
ISSN:1931-7204
1878-7452
DOI:10.1016/j.jsurg.2012.04.012