Learning about patient safety: Contexts, curricula and emotional safety for learning

Patient safety is a global concern and is at the fore of many health service policy agendas. The human and economic costs of errors and adverse events are enormous, and major Health Service organizational effort goes into interventions to reduce avoidable risk and facilitate learning from safety problems. Professional codes of practice exhort practitioners to ensure that they are competent and safe to practice. The most fundamental change needed if health care is to make meaningful progress in error reduction is a cultural one. Progress lies in addressing attitudes and in the establishment of learning cultures which enable systematic reporting of error and continuous improvement of practice. The place of learning, education and training to promote and support such a safety culture is well recognized. This talk draws on findings from a large UK national project funded by the UK Department of Health Patient Safety Research Programme. The study aimed to investigate the formal and informal ways pre-qualification students from a range of UK healthcare professions (Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Physiotherapy) learn about keeping patients safe from errors, mishaps and other adverse events (broadly known as patient safety). The talk will present several elements of the study, and with specific reference to Pharmacy, will present a discussion regarding the importance of knowledge contexts, formal and informal curricula, role modeling and students own ?emotional safety for learning.

Author(s): Alison Steven

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