Near-peers improve patient safety training in the preclinical curriculum

Cayla R Teal,Elizabeth A Nelson,Anne C Gill,Sally R Raty

doi:10.1080/10872981.2017.1289315

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackground: Accrediting bodies require medical schools to teach patient safety and residents to develop teaching skills in patient safety. We created a patient safety course in the preclinical curriculum and used continuous quality improvement to make changes over time.Objective: To assess the impact of resident teaching on student perceptions of a Patient Safety course.Design: Using the Institute for Healthcare Improvement patient safety curriculum as a frame, the course included the seven IHI modules, large group lectures and small group facilitated discussions. Applying a social action methodology, we evaluated the course for four years (Y1–Y4).Results: In Y1, Y2, Y3 and Y4, we distributed a course evaluation to each student (n = 184, 189, 191, and 184, respectively) and the response rate was 96, 97, 95 and 100%, respectively. Overall course quality, clarity of course goals and value of small group discussions increased in Y2 after the introduction of residents as small group facilitators. The value of residents and the overall value of the course increased in Y3 after we provided residents with small group facilitation training.Conclusions: Preclinical students value the interaction with residents and may perceive the overall value of a course to be improved based on near-peer involvement. Residents gain valuable experience in small group facilitation and leadership.

Highlights

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Lucian Leape Institute recommend incorporating patient-safety education into medical school curricula.[1,2] creating a course on the nascent science of patient safety is fraught with challenges, including having a sufficient number of faculty with adequate expertise in the discipline
We modified the patient safety curriculum (PSC) each year based on data gathered from learners
Formatting the PSC around small-group discussions requires a large number of facilitators; initial efforts to recruit faculty yielded only five volunteers

Summary

Introduction

We designed a patient safety curriculum (PSC) for second-year medical students (MS2 s) based on the seven online patient safety modules from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI):[9] Introduction to Patient Safety; Fundamentals of Patient Safety; Human. We created a patient safety course in the preclinical curriculum and used continuous quality improvement to make changes over time. Design: Using the Institute for Healthcare Improvement patient safety curriculum as a frame, the course included the seven IHI modules, large group lectures and small group facilitated discussions. The value of residents and the overall value of the course increased in Y3 after we provided residents with small group facilitation training. Conclusions: Preclinical students value the interaction with residents and may perceive the overall value of a course to be improved based on near-peer involvement. Residents gain valuable experience in small group facilitation and leadership

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion