Preparing Medical Students and Physicians to Cope With Their Medical Errors: A Scoping Review

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Patient Safety
• Professional Well-being

Background:

• Medical errors can lead to significant distress and career impact for clinicians.
• There is a recognized need for proactive educational strategies to support clinicians after medical errors.
• Existing guidance on preparing clinicians for medical error aftermath is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore current knowledge on educational programs and strategies for medical students and physicians.
• To identify effective methods for preparing clinicians to cope with personal involvement in patient harm from medical error.

Main Methods:

• Scoping review of three databases (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Scopus) up to January 3, 2025.
• Inclusion of articles describing programs for medical students/physicians coping with medical error involvement.
• Inductive thematic analysis to identify common pedagogical strategies.

Main Results:

• Twelve articles met eligibility criteria from over 5,000 initially screened.
• Identified dominant pedagogical strategies in two categories: learning content and support methods.
• Key learning areas include emotional processing, understanding fallibility, and workplace culture.

Conclusions:

• A synthesis of pedagogical strategies offers a framework for designing educational interventions.
• These interventions aim to enhance learners' capacity to manage involvement in patient harm.
• Focus on psychological safety, role-modeling, and reflection supports coping skills development.