BACKGROUND: To reduce harm caused by health care is a global priority. Medical students should be able to recognize unsafe conditions, systematically report errors, and near misses, investigate and improve such systems with a thorough understanding of human fallibility, and disclose errors to patients. Therefore, incorporating knowledge about patient safety into medical school curriculums is an urgent necessity. OBJECTIVES: To describe the extent to which Chinese medical students have patient safety in their knowledge, skills, and attitudes so as to provide evidence for implementation of a patient safety curriculum in medical schools, and to assess the quality of this investigative questionnaire. METHODS: Our questionnaire of 31 items was developed based on a 2008 WHO pilot study for a patient safety curriculum guide. Our investigation was conducted in three university medical schools in China. Year 3 and year 4 medical students were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire in their classroom settings. All items were scored from 1 to 5. Differences in responses among different universities, genders, and levels, as well as the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, were analyzed using SPSS 15.0. RESULTS: A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, and 143 male and 262 female students completed the survey. An average of 0.96% of survey questions were not answered, of which the most frequently unanswered item was "what will happen when medical error occurs?" The students' attitudes to learning about patient safety were positive, although their knowledge of medical error and how to report error was poor. There were no statistical differences among different medical schools and levels in any item responses. The only gender difference appeared in the response to "I would like to discuss with others when I made a medical error." There was a good coherence of reliability in sections 2, 3, and 4 of the questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha > 0.8), while sections 5 and 6 scored as less reliable. The validity of the questionnaire was good. CONCLUSIONS: Although medical students' understanding of patient safety is very poor in China, the students have a positive attitudes to learning about the knowledge of patient safety in their future careers.
BACKGROUND: To reduce harm caused by health care is a global priority. Medical students should be able to recognize unsafe conditions, systematically report errors, and near misses, investigate and improve such systems with a thorough understanding of human fallibility, and disclose errors to patients. Therefore, incorporating knowledge about patient safety into medical school curriculums is an urgent necessity. OBJECTIVES: To describe the extent to which Chinese medical students have patient safety in their knowledge, skills, and attitudes so as to provide evidence for implementation of a patient safety curriculum in medical schools, and to assess the quality of this investigative questionnaire. METHODS: Our questionnaire of 31 items was developed based on a 2008 WHO pilot study for a patient safety curriculum guide. Our investigation was conducted in three university medical schools in China. Year 3 and year 4 medical students were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire in their classroom settings. All items were scored from 1 to 5. Differences in responses among different universities, genders, and levels, as well as the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, were analyzed using SPSS 15.0. RESULTS: A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, and 143 male and 262 female students completed the survey. An average of 0.96% of survey questions were not answered, of which the most frequently unanswered item was "what will happen when medical error occurs?" The students' attitudes to learning about patient safety were positive, although their knowledge of medical error and how to report error was poor. There were no statistical differences among different medical schools and levels in any item responses. The only gender difference appeared in the response to "I would like to discuss with others when I made a medical error." There was a good coherence of reliability in sections 2, 3, and 4 of the questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha > 0.8), while sections 5 and 6 scored as less reliable. The validity of the questionnaire was good. CONCLUSIONS: Although medical students' understanding of patient safety is very poor in China, the students have a positive attitudes to learning about the knowledge of patient safety in their future careers.