Teaching medical students to recognise and report errors

Medical student error reporting can potentially be increased through patient safety education, culture change and by teaching students how to report errors. There is scant literature on what kinds of errors students see during clinical rotations. The authors developed an intervention to better understand what kinds of errors students see and to train them to identify and report errors.

A safety curriculum was delivered during the Medicine clerkship for the academic year 2015-2016. Prior to the workshop, students completed a preintervention survey to determine whether they had reported a clinical error. Subsequently, they participated in an educational workshop. Facilitated discussions about conditions contributing to errors, types of errors, prevention of errors and importance of reporting followed. Students were required to submit a simulated error report about an error they personally observed. An end-of-year survey was sent to students who participated in the curriculum to determine clinical error reporting frequency.

Students submitted 282 reports. Near miss errors were seen in 64% and adverse events in 36%. National Quality Forum serious events were reported in 14%, including one death. Recommendations to prevent similar events were weak (62%). Students correctly categorised 93% near miss, 88% adverse events, 67% diagnostic, 81% treatment and 78% preventative errors. On the preintervention survey, 8.5% stated they submitted an error report to their clinical site. On the end-of-year survey, 18% confirmed submitting a formal error report.

Training students to recognise and report errors can be successfully integrated into a clinical clerkship and impact clinical error reporting.