Table 1 Course content
Title | Objectives | |
|---|---|---|
Lectures | Science of safety | • Technical introduction to the area of patient safety • Learning about the burden and contributing factors • Identifying system failures • Describing safe design principles to prevent system failures |
Professionalism and safety culture | • Understanding of professionalism and patient safety culture • Learning how culture can be improved • Identifying core aspects of a strong patient safety culture • Describing characteristics of a just culture • Developing strategies to assess and improve patient safety culture | |
Communication and teamwork | • Understanding the importance and key attributes of effective communication • Defining critical team interactions that can be standardized in a clinical area • Describing characteristics of good processes for interpersonal interactions | |
Conflict management | • Learning about task-appropriate assertiveness for empowerment and patient advocacy • Learning to develop strategies for dealing with task and interpersonal conflicts • Identifying unit-level structures that support team member empowerment and conflict management | |
Human and system factors | • Identifying why mistakes occur • Applying principles of human factors to identify human system interactions • Conducting evaluations to identify problems and recommend changes • Evaluating a task and space with principles of human factors as a guide | |
Error disclosure | • Creating a culture that supports error reporting and disclosure • Developing strategies to reduce barriers to error reporting, effective disclosure, and providing support for second victims of adverse events • Learning attributes of a good error reporting system | |
Medical record documentation | • Learning about the basics of medical record documentation • Learning about best practices, confidentiality and information management • Learning about the dos and don’ts of documentation | |
Infection control and prevention | • Learning about standard and transmission-based precautions • Learning about various types of isolation signage • Practicing hand hygiene and use of personal protective equipment | |
Group Activities | Learning from defects | • Introduction to the ‘Learning from Defects’ (LFD) tool • Learning about second-order problem solving • Describing how the LFD tool can be used to drive quality improvement efforts • Using varied sources of data to characterize defects • Using the defect investigation tool to analyze adverse events • Analyzing medical errors • Recommending actions to help prevent safety events |
Communication skills | • Using structured communication methods (SBAR, ALEEN* and the two attempt rule) to communicate safety concerns through a role-play. • Resolving conflict with team members, patients, and/or attendants | |
Case study discussions on safety events | • Using case studies on patient safety events to discuss causes and prevention strategies |