Analysis of patient safety messages delivered and received during clinical rounds

Multiple modalities are available to introduce patient safety training to healthcare professionals. In internal medicine, clinical rounds have always played an important role in education; however, the patient safety content taught at the point of care is not well studied. We studied, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the number and nature of patient safety messages delivered by attending physicians to determine what is taught at the point of care and how well this is recognised and recalled by attending physicians, residents and medical students.

This prospective mixed methods study was conducted on the medicine teaching service. Clinical rounds were audio-recorded. Immediately after rounds, attending physicians, residents and students completed a short survey card identifying the number and type of educational messages they immediately recalled teaching or hearing. Independent t-test was used to compare differences in the number of messages delivered by attendings and recalled by trainees. One-way analysis of variance was used to compare differences in messages delivered by attending physicians compared with trainees. Recordings were transcribed and analysed qualitatively for patient safety content.

Trainees recalled more educational messages than attendings recalled teaching in all educational domains. Safety messages comprised 17.5% of educational messages. The average number of patient safety messages recalled per session was 1.08 per attending physicians, 1.84 per resident and 2.50 per student. Residents recalled 56.4% of safety messages delivered; students recalled 76.7% of safety messages.

Patient safety is a focus of teaching during clinical rounds and provides meaningful opportunities to train students and residents to practice safe patient care.