“Disbelief and Sadness”: First-Year Health Profession Students’ Perspectives on Medical Errors

Conclusions First-year health profession students responded to medical error with strong emotion and distress. Their responses largely represent an individualistic view of healthcare in both the causes and solutions to medical errors. No differences in response themes were observed by discipline. This study represents our students’ emotional responses to a medical error scenario. The qualitative responses and reactions of students to the Sheridan video offered opportunities to tease out nuances that would otherwise be unavailable in a typical attitudes survey. We noted a individualistic view of healthcare in both the causes and solutions to medical errors. We view these results as an opportunity for interprofessional education in systems-level approaches to improve patient safety. Curricular efforts in interprofessional education, collaborative practice, and patient safety should be driven by these results.
Source: Journal of Patient Safety - Category: Health Management Tags: Original Studies Source Type: research