Current assessments of quality and safety education in nursing

Concerns about the quality and safety of health care have changed practice expectations and created a mandate for change in the preparation of health care professionals. The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses project team conducted a survey to assess current levels of integration of quality and safety content in pre-licensure nursing curricula. Views of 195 nursing program leaders are presented, including information about satisfaction with faculty expertise and student competency development related to 6 domains that define quality and safety content: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. With competency definitions as the sole reference point, survey respondents indicated that quality and safety content was embedded in current curricula, and they were generally satisfied that students were developing the desired competencies. These data are contrasted with work reported elsewhere in this issue of Nursing Outlook and readers are invited to consider a variety of interpretations of the differences.