Medical students’ knowledge and perceptions about patient safety develop in the preclinical years

Background To improve patient safety culture, the attitudes of graduating medical students need to be influenced. The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of perceptions, attitudes and knowledge medical students had about patient safety before they received education on the subject.

Methods From 2016 to 2018, third-year medical students from the University of Oulu filled in a voluntary questionnaire consisting of 22 questions related to patient safety. All survey questions utilized a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Results The questionnaire was returned by 153 of 417 students (36.7%). Evaluation of the questionnaires showed that 96.7% of students considered patient safety and an open workplace environment to be important, 96.1% thought errors were inevitable, 73.4% thought that doctors were able to prevent medical errors by their own actions at work, and 96.7% of students planned to pay more attention at work after having experienced medical errors. There was a positive correlation between received patient safety education and positive attitudes towards patient safety.

Conclusions The findings of this study suggest that medical students’ attitudes towards patient safety develop before they receive education about the subject in their clinical studies. Continuous learning about patient safety should be emphasized in teaching throughout medical school, and it should be considered when developing new curricula.

Hertta Heikkinen, Auvo Rauhala, Leila Niemi-Murola, Maiju Welling, Seppo Alahuhta

Hertta Heikkinen

B.M., doctoral student

University of Oulu, Faculty of Medicine