[Design and evaluation of a preclinical medical elective titled "Safety culture in healthcare: Every error counts!"]

Abstract

Introduction: The World Health Organization has called for more importance to be attached to the subject of patient safety in medical studies. However, teaching staff are unsure when the right time is to include this topic in existing medical school curricula. The aim of this article is to present the learning objectives, design and evaluation of a two-day elective on patient safety offered in the preclinical phase of medical studies at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Frankfurt am Main. To the best of our knowledge, no existing elective on safety culture has been provided at such an early stage of medical studies in Germany.

Methods: After defining learning objectives and teaching methods, the safety culture elective was offered in the winter term 2019/20. Based on a questionnaire, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the students' acceptance of the elective was carried out. We also sought to investigate whether group role-play was considered an effective means of communicating the teaching content. Acceptance and rejection of the elective were evaluated on a six-point Likert scale.

Results: The resulting elective, consisting of topical input via film, an introductory speech, role-play and discussions, is presented. Nineteen students in the preclinical phase of their medical studies took part. Overall, the quantitative and qualitative evaluation delivered positive results (1.2±0.5), and the topic was perceived to very important. The students considered the didactic implementation and the learning objectives to be very good, and they became acquainted with different sources of error.

Discussion: The preclinical elective would appear to be suitable for demonstrating the importance of medical safety to medical students and teaching them how to deal with the topic constructively. It can be viewed as a best-practice example for the development of comparable learning formats at medical faculties.

Conclusion: The results show that the preclinical phase is a suitable time to illustrate the importance of the subject of patient safety during medical studies.

Keywords: Evaluation; Fehler; Medical education; Medical error; Medizinische Ausbildung; Patient safety; Patientensicherheit.