Current assessment of patient safety education

The purpose of this literature review was to examine current evidence on how student nurses and nursing faculty members perceived the integration of patient safety education in preregistration/undergraduate nursing training. Databases searched from January 2000 to April 2011 included CINAHL, PsycINFO, British Nursing Index, PubMed, AMED, Academic Science, Midline, Cochrane Library Database, Web of Knowledge, Ovid Nursing Database, Wiley Online Library and Science Direct. In total, 77 articles were initially found, although only 15 were included in the author's review. Of these, 5 papers were research-based articles that examined aspects of patient safety education in undergraduate/pre-registration nursing training, and 9 papers were literature review and discussion based, which provided insight into the experience, assessment, evaluation or implementation of patient safety education curriculum in nursing education. The author's literature review highlights the continuing lack of research on patient safety education in undergraduate/preregistration nursing training and, in particular, outlines areas in nursing education which need to be addressed to develop patient-safety-friendly nursing curricula.