Patient safety: Do nursing and medical curricula address this theme?

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Summary

In this literature review, we examine to what extent patient safety is addressed within medical and nursing curricula. Patient safety is the foundation of healthcare practice and education both in the UK and internationally. Recent research and policy initiatives have highlighted this issue. The paper highlights the significance of this topic as an aspect of study in its own right by examining not only the fiscal but also the human costs such events invite.

In the United Kingdom patient safety issues feature prominently in the (Department of Health, 2000a. An organisation with a memory. The report of an expert group on learning from adverse events. The Stationery Office, London, Department of Health, 2000b. Handling complaints: monitoring the NHS complaints procedures (England, Financial year 1998–99). The Stationery Office, London.) policy documentation but this is not reflected within the formal curricula guidelines issued by the NMC and GMC. Yet if healthcare educational curricula were to recognise the value of learning from errors, such events could become part of a wider educational resource enabling both students and facilitators to prevent threats to patient safety. For this reason, the paper attempts to articulate why patient safety should be afforded greater prominence within medical and nursing curricula. We argue that learning how to manage errors effectively would enable trainee practitioners to improve patient care, reduce the burden on an overstretched health care system and engage in dynamic as opposed to defensive practice.

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.

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