Enhanced Morbidity and Mortality Meeting and Patient Safety Education for Specialty Trainees

Mortality and morbidity (M&M) meetings present a forum to discuss and review in-hospital deaths and complications to improve patient care. However, it remains an untapped resource to improve the exposure of the trainees to the principles of patient safety METHODS: We modified the departmental M&M meetings to enhance the delivery of patient safety education. The meeting started with a 5-minute overview of general patient safety principles, followed by a trainee-led discussion of a recent patient safety incident where opinions were sought about key learning points and ways to prevent the incident from happening in future. The discussion concluded with a patient safety presentation summarizing the salient points that were mapped to the WHO Patient Safety Curriculum. The suggestions from the meeting were noted, and the changes were instituted in the department over the next month and were reported back in the next meeting.

From January to August 2012, seven enhanced M&M meetings were organized and attended by orthopaedic specialty trainees in a postgraduate Deanery. We explored the early impact of these monthly discussions by using the Junior Doctors' Patient Safety Attitudes and Climate Questionnaire as an assessment tool. The questionnaire reports an early impact on patient safety knowledge, awareness, and attitudes to patient safety; however, more work is needed to improve the workplace safety climate.

We recommend immediate introduction of the enhanced M&M meetings focusing on patient safety in the other disciplines and postgraduate deaneries.