Teaching medical students to recognise and report errors.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Patient Safety
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Limited literature exists on the types of errors medical students encounter during clinical rotations.
• Medical student error reporting rates can be enhanced through patient safety education and cultural changes.
• An intervention was developed to improve medical students' ability to identify and report errors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the impact of a patient safety curriculum on medical students' error identification and reporting.
• To train medical students to recognize and report clinical errors effectively.
• To understand the types of errors medical students observe during their clerkships.

Main Methods:

• A safety curriculum was implemented during the Medicine clerkship.
• Students completed pre- and post-intervention surveys on error reporting frequency.
• An educational workshop covered error conditions, types, prevention, and reporting importance, followed by a simulated error report submission.

Main Results:

• Students submitted 282 error reports, with 64% being near misses and 36% adverse events.
• 14% of reports involved National Quality Forum serious events, including one fatality.
• Formal error report submission increased from 8.5% pre-intervention to 18% post-intervention.

Conclusions:

• Integrating error recognition and reporting training into clinical clerkships is feasible.
• Such training can significantly impact and improve clinical error reporting by medical students.
• Enhanced medical student reporting contributes to overall patient safety and quality improvement.