Razali, Shazrina Ahmad
(2020)
Attitudes on patient safety among Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) medical students.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a patient safety
curriculum guide for medical schools worldwide since 2009 following realizing
patient safety is a universal health concern. Even though, medical schools agreed on
the impact of patient safety to nurture future healthcare professional, however lack of
documentation on their implementation of patient safety curriculum in their medical
training. The aim of this study is to explore attitudes and its associated factors on
patient safety among Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) undergraduate medical
students. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 457 Year
2 to Year 5 medical students. The attitudes on patient safety were measured using a
validated tool, Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire (APSQ) III on 7 points Likert
scale. The APSQ III measures 9 domains; i) patient safety training received, ii) error
reporting confidence, iii) working hours as error cause, iv) error inevitability, v)
professional incompetence as error cause, vi) disclosure responsibility, vii) team
functioning, viii) patient involvement in reducing error, and ix) importance of patient
safety in the curriculum. Each domain was interpreted as positive, neutral, or negative
attitudes. Six items were reverse coded. Statistical analysis independent t-test, oneway
ANOVA and Pearson correlation test were performed using Statistical Package
for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24. RESULTS: A total of 427 (93.4% response
rate) out of 457 medical students from Year 2 until Year 5 voluntarily participated in
this study (6.6% drop out rate). Majority of them were female 290 (67.9%), age 21
years old and above 336 (78.7%), Year 2 126 (29.5%) and scored grade B+, grade pointer (3.33-3.66) 196 (45.9%). All were positive attitudes except for domain 5
(professional incompetence as error cause). The highest score was domain 7 (team
functioning) and the lowest score was domain 5 (professional incompetence as error
cause). Post-hoc analysis showed a significant mean difference of attitude to patient
safety score and year of study among pre-clinical and clinical year students in five
domains. There was poor positive correlation between age and domain 3 (working
hours as error cause). There were also a poor positive correlation between academic
performance for domain 3 (working hours as error cause) and domain 4 (error
inevitability). However, attitudes on patient safety were not associated with gender.
CONCLUSION: USM medical students had a positive attitude towards patient safety
in general. However, there was still a room for improvement towards improvement of
patient safety among medical students prior their practice as medical doctor.
Therefore, patient safety curriculum need to be implemented as early as possible in the
medical training. Hence, a proper documentation and a thorough curriculum review on
patient safety curriculum in medical schools are crucial to ensure improvement of
patient safety among medical doctors in future practise.
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