Background: Preventable medical errors are currently the third leading cause of death in the United States following heart disease and cancer (1). In light of this, integration of formal patient safety education into undergraduate medical education has been encouraged by the World Health Organization in order to address issues of quality of care (2). Early exposure of medical students to patient safety knowledge may lead to them delivering safer care in their clerkship and residency years.
Purpose: This study aimed to assess the change in patient safety knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs in students after early exposure and education to patient safety during pre-clinical years.
Description: A patient safety training was conducted for interested first and second-year medical students and responses were assessed through a pre-test, immediate post-test, 3-month post-test, and 6-month post-test. The survey assessed student knowledge on aspects of patient safety, identifying the correct course of action in different scenarios concerning patient safety, and Likert scale questions assessing if the training influenced students’ desire to learn about patient safety. Students were also able to discuss real case scenarios and learn about clinical best practices in an interactive segment with physicians. RStudio was used to perform summary statistics and chi-square tests to compare the pre- and post- tests.
Conclusions: Of the original 23 first- and second-year medical students, 12 and 7 students completed the 3-month and 6-month post-tests, respectively. Data showed improvement in students considering themselves to be well-versed in different aspects of patient safety in the 3-month post-test (33.3%; p-value=1.00) compared to the pre-test training (11.8%) but declined in the 6-month post-test (14.3%; p-value=1.00). The percent of students that agreed they plan to incorporate patient safety techniques into their future practice was 83% in the 3-month post-test (pre-test: 94.1%; p-value=1.00) and 100% in the 6-month post-test (p-value=1.00). Compared to the pre-test (94.1%), there was no change in responses to the statement that patient safety can have a large impact on patient health outcomes (91.7% for 3-month post-test; p-value=1.00 and 100% for 6-month post-test; p-value=1.00).The improvement in students who considered themselves to be knowledgeable about patient safety 3 months after the training is promising, despite the results of the 6-month post-test, as it highlights the need for long-term training. The lack of statistically significant findings can most likely be attributed to small sample size. The high percentage agreement to incorporate patient safety techniques and in understanding that patient safety can have an impact on patient health outcomes is encouraging. This indicates the long-term influence that patient safety training can have in preclinical years and potentially in clerkship years.