Patient safety in medical education: Students' perceptions, knowledge and attitudes

Patient safety is a new and challenging discipline in the Iranian health care industry. Among
the challenges for patient safety improvement, education of medical and paramedical students
is intimidating. The present study was designed to assess students’ perceptions of
patient safety, and their knowledge and attitudes to patient safety education. This crosssectional
analytical study was conducted in 2012 at Urmia University of Medical Sciences,
West Azerbaijan province, Iran. 134 students studying medicine, nursing, and midwifery
were recruited through census for the study. A questionnaire was used for collecting data,
which were then analyzed through SPSS statistical software (version 16.0), using Chisquare
test, Spearman correlation coefficient, F and LSD tests. A total of 121 questionnaires
were completed, and 50% of the students demonstrated good knowledge about
patient safety. The relationships between students’ attitudes to patient safety and years of
study, sex and course were significant (0.003, 0.001 and 0.017, respectively). F and LSD
tests indicated that regarding the difference between the mean scores of perceptions of
patient safety and attitudes to patient safety education, there was a significant difference
among medical and nursing/midwifery students. Little knowledge of students regarding
patient safety indicates the inefficiency of informal education to fill the gap; therefore, it is
recommended to consider patient safety in the curriculums of all medical and paramedical
sciences and formulate better policies for patient safety.