RESEARCH ARTICLE
Patient Safety Competencies among Senior Students of Health Professions: An Iranian Evaluation Study
Niloofar Alidousti-Shahraki1, Sedigheh Farzi2, *, Mohammad Javad Tarrahi3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2022Volume: 16
E-location ID: e187443462205090
Publisher ID: e187443462205090
DOI: 10.2174/18744346-v16-e2205090
Article History:
Received Date: 16/12/2021Revision Received Date: 21/1/2022
Acceptance Date: 03/3/2022
Electronic publication date: 14/06/2022
Collection year: 2022
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction:
Patient safety refers to preventing and reducing adverse events that might harm the patient while providing care. Enhancing patient safety competence upon entering the clinical environment requires introducing and integrating it in health professions' education.
Aim:
This study aimed to investigate patient safety competence among senior health professions students.
Methods:
This study was conducted in 2020 using a cross-sectional study. In total, 390 senior health professions students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, midwifery, surgical technologist (operating room technician), and anesthesia were selected through a stratified convenience method. Data were collected using the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey – H-PEPSS from August to September 2020 and analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics. All statistical computations were carried out using SPSS version 16. A significant level of 5% was considered (P <0.05).
Results:
The mean scores of patient safety in health professions education in the classroom and clinical setting were 0.51 and 0.47, respectively. Among Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey – H-PEPSS domains, the highest mean score was obtained in the effective communication domain (0.61 in the classroom and 0.57 in the clinical setting). In contrast, domains of working in teams with other health professions showed the lowest mean score (0.39 in the classroom and 0.38 in the clinical setting).
Conclusion:
Patient safety in health profession education, particularly working in teams with other health professions, is at a moderate level in the classroom and a weak level in the clinical setting. Regarding the importance of interprofessional collaboration in promoting patient safety, it is recommended that the health sciences curriculum in Iran be reviewed to motivate students for interprofessional collaboration and the perception of its significance in reducing health profession's errors.
