The Question of Safety: An Exploration of Errors among Undergraduate Nursing Students Placed on Clinical Learning Contracts

Abstract

This study was conducted to understand patient safety from an educationsystems perspective (Gregory, Guse, Davidson Dick, Russell, 2007). Within the health care system, addressing patient safety from a systems perspective is receiving increasing attention and action. In contrast, nursing education has primarily addressed patient-safety matters from an individual student, rather than a systems-based perspective. Understanding the impact of nursing education systems on students, with respect to patient safety, remains significantly under-researched. A systems perspective entails “looking within” and reviewing how existing program structures and processes (eg., curriculum, sequencing of courses, student access to skills labs, clinical practice models, math calculation tests, etc.) foster or undermine patient safety among nursing students. The findings from this study revealed that patient safety was narrowly understood by the majority of stakeholder groups as “safe patient care.” With few exceptions among the participants, patient safety was equated to safe medication administration (notably, the Five Rights).