Patient safety: Do nursing and medical curricula address this theme?
Introduction
Everyday more than one million people are treated safely and successfully in the NHS. But … in complex health care systems things will and do go wrong, no matter how dedicated and professional the staff. The effects of harming a patient are widespread … devastating consequences can ensue and staff can become demoralised and disaffected (National Patient Safety Agency, 2003a, p. 3)
According to the Chief Medical Officer’s Report, the vast majority of NHS care meets the high clinical standards expected by the public (Department of Health, 2000a, National Patient Safety Agency, 2003a). Although the vast majority of health professionals are committed to attaining excellence when caring for patients, enquiries into adverse events have too often shown that failure is largely tolerated by medical/nursing staff (Department of Health, 2000a, Lester and Tritter, 2001, Maddox et al., 2001, Neale et al., 2001; The Bristol Infirmary Inquiry 2001). The notion of failure when used in this context denotes an adverse event or error, which the Department of Health (2000a) defines as an event or omission arising during clinical care and causing physical or psychological injury to a patient. Thus, patient safety is defined as freedom from accidental injury of any kind (Kohn et al., 1999, Weinger et al., 2003).
Within the literature, there is a lack of a common definition for the terms error, adverse event and patient safety. While the Department of Health (2000a) do not distinguish between adverse events or errors, Kohn et al. (1999, p. 3) have attempted to distinguish between them by defining errors as the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution) or the use of the wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning). For the purpose of this review, we define an adverse event as any occurrence leading to iatrogenic injury. When there are operational and organisational breakdowns, whatever their cause and however they are defined, devastating and distressing consequences can ensue not only for patients and their families, but also for staff (Houston and Allt, 1997, National Patient Safety Agency, 2003a). In particular, the psychological impact of failure exerts additional pressure upon organisations that are already challenged, given that such events have the potential to demoralise staff and undermine public confidence (Aron and Headrick, 2002, Department of Health, 2000a, Department of Health, 2001a, National Patient Safety Agency, 2003a; The Bristol Infirmary Inquiry, 2001). Nevertheless, the delivery of top quality evidence-based care ultimately depends on the competence of practitioners and the nature of the organisational milieu supporting their work (Ziv et al., 2000).
Section snippets
Patient safety: the extent of the problem, policy relevance and related research
The cumulative financial burdens incurred by organisations such as the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) following adverse events are enormous. For example, in 1998/1999 the Department of Health paid out an estimated £400 million to settle its clinical negligence claims (National Audit Office, 2000a). This is in addition to having to set aside a further £2.4 billion to meet existing and expected liability claims. A further £2 billion per year was also required to fund extra hospital
Learning from adverse events
To learn from adverse events and near misses, the health service needs an accurate reporting system. In the UK, reporting systems for adverse events and near misses are still in their infancy. When self-report methods of data collection were used, adverse events well in excess of those studies drawing on patient records, such as the Harvard study, were produced (Classen et al., 1991, Bates et al., 1995). When observational methods were employed, error rates rose even more markedly (Andrews et
Educational response to policy initiatives
Although detailed work needs to be undertaken, there is little evidence that undergraduate, pre-registration, postgraduate and post-registration programmes equip students with the skills necessary to examine patient safety issues, as an integral part of their practice. Several potentially beneficial processes have been introduced. These include root cause analysis programmes, national learning and reporting systems, and human factor engineering (the study of the impact of workplace design and
Nursing curriculum guidelines
The low degree of emphasis on patient safety is exemplified by the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s 21-page document outlining the Requirements for Pre-Registration Nursing Programmes Protecting the Public through Professional Standards (NMC, 2002). In this document, only four recommendations overtly refer to issues of patient safety. Yet much of the evidence on patient safety and the systematic management of medical error had already started to emerge within the academic literature prior to its
Medical curriculum guidelines
Likewise, the General Medical Council’s document is equally broad ranging. For example, in its 24-page document, Tomorrow’s Doctors: Recommendations of Undergraduate Medical Education (GMC, 2003) five areas are identified as guiding statements that relate to issues of patient safety, these being that students should:
- •
Know about and understand the following – how errors can happen in practice and the principles of managing risks.
- •
Be able to perform clinical skills safely.
- •
Know and understand the
Are educators doing safety justice?
Some have argued that nursing and medical students, though well prepared in the art and science base of their respective disciplines in order to look after individual patients, have few of the skills necessary to improve care and patient safety (Aron and Headrick, 2002, Maddox et al., 2001). Nevertheless, if we re-examine the guiding principles outlined above, neither document recommends students should examine topics such as interdisciplinarity and interdependence. Yet both of these aspects
Improving practice by learning from adverse events
Despite the above, the central tenet of ‘near misses,’ and ‘adverse events’ is the need to learn from the situation, in order to improve practice and prevent the same situation arising in the future. For example, in ‘high reliability’ organisations such as the airline, navy and nuclear industry, where mistakes are minimised because of their overwhelming implications, a culture that is constantly alert to the possibility of failure has developed. This means that the root cause of adverse events
Conclusion
We have shown that whilst a first principle of health care is ‘primum non nocere’, or first do no harm, the reality of modern health care is that adverse events of many kinds threaten patient safety. There are deficiencies in definitions of errors and adverse events and a lack of accurate data sources but it remains clear that the degree to which harms come to people using health services is currently unacceptable. This has the consequences of both large economic costs and great suffering.
References (50)
- et al.
An alternative strategy for studying adverse events in medical care
Lancet
(1997) - et al.
Doctor’s perceptions of the links between stress and lowered clinical care
Social Science and Medicine
(1997) - et al.
Patient safety and the need for professional and educational change
Nursing Outlook
(2001) Managing medical mistakes: ideology insularity and accountability among internists-in-training
Social Science and Medicine
(1984)- et al.
Retrospective data collection and analytical techniques for patient safety studies
Journal of Biomedical Informatics
(2003) - et al.
Educating physicians prepared to improve care and safety is no accident: it requires a systematic approach
Quality and Safety in Health Care
(2002) - et al.
Incidence of adverse drug events and potential adverse drug events
Journal of the American Medical Association
(1995) - et al.
Individuals practice and system causes of errors in nursing a taxonomy
Journal of Nursing Administration
(2002) - et al.
The state of quality management in HMOs
HMO Practice
(1992) Root cause analysis in perinatal care: health care professionals creating safer health care systems
The Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing
(2001)
Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalised patients: results of the Harvard medical practice study I
New England Journal of Medicine
Computerized surveillance of adverse drug events in hospitalised patients
Journal of the American Medical Association
Shame: the elephant in the room
Quality and Safety in Health Care
A look into the nature and causes of human errors in the intensive care unit
Critical Care Medicine
Culture for improving patient safety through learning; the role of teamwork
Quality and Safety in Health Care
Human factors engineering and patient safety
Quality and Safety in Health Care
The incidence and nature of surgical adverse events in Colorado and Utah in 1992
Surgery
Psychological distress and error making among junior hours officers
British Journal of Health Psychology
Crossing the quality chasm: a new health system for the 21st century
To err is human: building a safer health system
Cited by (44)
Can emergency nurses safely and accurately remove cervical spine collars in low risk adult trauma patients: An integrative review
2016, Australasian Emergency Nursing JournalCitation Excerpt :This practice aids patient care, improves patient satisfaction and increases the consistency of care and improved teamwork.39,42,43 Health care quality improvement has matured into needing to detect defects in systems and processes to encourage and guide change in development our service delivery, with the goal to reduce harm to patients and improve patient safety by creating applicable solutions to daily work.44,45 This review demonstrates c-spine clinical decision rules could be successfully adopted by trained nursing staff to guide their decision making regarding the need for cervical spine immobilisation in low-risk trauma adult patients.
Undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students' self-reported confidence in learning about patient safety in the classroom and clinical settings: An annual cross-sectional study (2010-2013)
2015, International Journal of Nursing StudiesCitation Excerpt :Within Canadian hospitals alone, there are between 9250 and 23,750 annual deaths that result from adverse events that could have been prevented (Baker et al., 2004). Patient safety in the clinical setting can be greatly improved through training of healthcare professionals on this topic (Maddox et al., 2001; Wakefield et al., 2005; World Health Organization, 2011). It is therefore essential to provide education on the fundamentals of patient safety to future healthcare practitioners during their professional training to reduce the risk of unnecessary harm to patients, and to advance and sustain a culture of safety within a complex and evolving healthcare environment (World Health Organization, 2009b, 2011).
Patient safety: Committing to learn and acting to improve
2014, Nurse Education TodayNursing students' perspectives and suggestions on patient safety-implications for developing the nursing education curriculum in iran
2014, Nurse Education TodayCitation Excerpt :The need to create an appropriate environment which facilitates the practise of patient safety guidelines arose from theme two. This finding echoes the international literature that whilst the nursing and medical curricula minimally address the issues of risk and safety, both lack the level of detail necessary for the practitioner to evaluate operationalisation (Wakefield et al., 2005; Wilcock, 2011). Students suggested that the environment of care in nursing units promoted nurses' resistance to safe practice.
First year nursing students' viewpoints about compromised clinical safety
2013, Nurse Education TodayCitation Excerpt :Nurse educators are stakeholders within this safe practice community. As such, they are increasingly informed by the growing body of evidence relative to pre-licensure pedagogical processes and clinical safety (Canadian Patient Safety Institute, 2008; Killam et al., 2010; Wakefield et al., 2005). Engendering a safety conscience begins early in many nursing curricula, often prior to initial clinical placements.
A comparative study between traditional and innovative medical school students perceptions and attitude regarding the effectiveness of patient safety in medical education
2019, Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology