WORLD ALLIANCE FOR PATIENT SAFETY

WHO PATIENT SAFETY CURRICULUM GUIDE

FOR MEDICAL SCHOOLS
A SUMMARY

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 World Health Organization 2009

WHO/IER/PSP/2009.3S

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Curriculum Guide: a summary

Background

advantages to introducing both of these

simultaneously. The number of topics
covered may be increased over time to
ease implementation.

With the growing recognition of the

harms caused by health care comes the
need for medical students to learn how
to deliver safer care. The Curriculum
Guide aims to support medical schools
worldwide in implementing patient safety
education by providing a comprehensive
curriculum for patient safety, to promote
and enhance the status of patient safety
worldwide and ultimately to prepare
students for safe practice.

Some aspects of patient safety link in

well with existing subjects and can be
incorporated into existing sessions.
Others are relatively new and are likely to
dedicated sessions. A balance must be
struck between integration of material
into existing curriculum and ability to
coordinate delivery effectively.

The Australian Patient Safety Education

Framework was used to derive 11 topics
for the Curriculum Guide. Topics within
the Curriculum are designed to stand
alone, each with content for 60-90
minutes teaching and include a variety
of ideas for implementation and
assessment.

Principles of patient safety teaching

and learning
Patient safety education can be
integrated into procedural skills training
programmes. A number of different
patient safety topics may be relevant in
any given procedure, and those taught
for one procedure often also apply
generally.

Implementation
Early steps include identifying learning
outcomes, mapping patient safety to
existing curriculum and then assessing
capacity within the faculty to deliver the
patient safety Curriculum and engaging
in capacity building work.

Patient safety education can be made

meaningful to students by placing the
principles in context with their current
and future practical roles, using relevant
examples of safety and giving students
an opportunity to practise their patient
safety knowledge and skills.

Decisions regarding delivery of patient

safety material will depend on the nature
and content of existing curriculum, but
may be matched to current educational
formats. The curriculum addresses
student knowledge and performance
elements of patient safety, and there are

Students learn better in a safe supportive

learning environment, one which is
challenging but not intimidating and
where experiential learning is facilitated.
Educators may adopt a variety of styles
including roles as information provider,

role model, facilitator, assessor, planner

and resource provider. There is an
important role for patients in delivering
patient safety education.

groups, individual interviews, observation

and docements/records. Findings of
evaluation must be disseminated and
action taken where appropriate.

Assessing patient safety

Patient safety education activities

Assessments may be formative or

summative, and these may be in-course
or end-of-course. Assessments strongly
influence study behaviour and learning
outcomes for students and therefore
should align with desired learning
outcomes. Blueprinting defines the
competencies students are expected to
meet, and can be used to map patient
safety topics across the curriculum as a
whole. The purpose of assessment
should drive the choice of format for
example, written (e.g. multiple choice
questions, modified essays, logbooks) or
practical (e.g. direct observation, casebased discussions, OSCE).

A number of different educational formats

may be used in the delivery of the
Curriculum, including lectures, ward
round-based teaching, small group
learning, case based discussions,
independent study, patient tracking, role
play, simulation and undertaking
improvement projects. Each of these has
benefits and challenges, and different
methods are appropriate for different
learning goals.
Transnational Approach
Health care is now globalized, and
medical education should reflect this.
The Curriculum Guide operates on
universal principles that are applicable
globally, and though delivery should be
customized to local needs and culture.
There is a need for international human
and physical resource capacity building
on an international level.

Evaluating patient safety

Evaluation measures how and what is
taught in the curriculum by collecting
data from students, patients, teachers
and/or other stakeholders. Choices must
be made about what is being evaluated,
who the evaluation is for and what
questions the evaluation is trying to
answer. There are different types of
evaluation proactive, clarificative,
interactive, monitoring and impact each
answering the different questions
evaluation can ask. Data for evaluation
may be gathered in a number of ways
self-reflection, questionnaires, focus

Introduction to topics
As future clinicians students need to
learn about patient safety. There is a
progression from knowing what to
knowing how and ultimately to doing.
Best learning is through hands-on
experience with feedback from trainers,
along with mentoring and coaching.
There are a number of cultural barriers to

complex that the successful treatment

and outcome for each patient depends
on a range of factors, not just the
competence of an individual health care
provider. When so many people and
different types of health-care providers
(doctors, nurses, pharmacists and allied
health) are involved, it is very difficult to
ensure safe care unless the system of
care is designed to facilitate timely and
complete information and understanding
by all the health professionals. This topic
presents the case for patient safety.

change which students can be helped to

explore and challenge. The Curriculum
can be integrated with clinical care (eg
infection control). Students need to learn
to practise safe health care even if the
prevailing medical culture is not
supportive of this, and to learn to deal
with the conflicts this may create.
Topic 1: What is patient safety?
Health professionals are increasingly
being required to incorporate patient
safety principles and concepts into
everyday practice. In 2002, WHO
Member States agreed on a World
Health Assembly resolution on patient
safety because they saw the need to
reduce the harm and suffering of patients
and their families as well as the
compelling evidence of the economic
benefits of improving patient safety.
Studies show that additional
hospitalization, litigation costs, infections
acquired in hospitals, lost income,
disability and medical expenses have
cost some countries between US$ 6
billion and US$ 29 billion a year. A
number of countries have published
studies highlighting the overwhelming
evidence showing that significant
numbers of patients are harmed due to
their health care, either resulting in
permanent injury, increased length of
stay in hospitals or even death. We have
learnt over the last decade that adverse
events occur not because bad people
intentionally hurt patients but rather that
the system of health care today is so

Topic 2: What is human factors and

why is it important to patient safety?
Human factors, engineering or
ergonomics is the science of the
interrelationship between humans, their
tools and the environment in which they
live and work [3]. Human factors
engineering will help students
understand how people perform under
different circumstances so that systems
and products can be built to enhance
performance. It covers the human
machine and human-to-human
interactions such as communication,
teamwork and organizational culture.
Other industries such as aviation,
manufacturing and the military have
successfully applied knowledge of
human factors to improve systems and
services. Students need to understand
how human factors can be used to
reduce adverse events and errors by
identifying how and why systems break
down and how and why human beings

individual doctor or nurse working in a

hospital can do their very best in treating
and caring for their patients but alone
that will not be enough to provide a safe
and quality service. This is because
patients depend on many people doing
the right thing at the right time for them;
in other words, they depend on a system
of care.

miscommunicate. Using a human factors

approach, the human system interface
can be improved by providing betterdesigned systems and processes. This
involves simplifying processes,
standardizing procedures, providing
backup when humans fail, improving
communication, redesigning equipment
and engendering a consciousness of
behavioural, organizational and
technological limitations that lead to
error.

Topic 4: Being an effective team

player
Medical students understanding of
teamwork involves more than
identification with the medical team. It
requires students to know the benefits of
multidisciplinary teams and how effective
multidisciplinary teams improve care and
reduce errors. An effective team is one in
which the team members communicate
with one another as well as combining
their observations, expertise and
decision-making responsibilities to
optimize patient care. The task of
communication and flow of information
between health providers and patients
can be complicated due to the spread of
clinical responsibility among members of
the health-care team. This can result in
patients being required to repeat the
same information to multiple health
providers. More importantly,
miscommunication has also been
associated with delays in diagnosis,
treatment and discharge as well as
failures to follow up on test results.
Students need to know how effective
health-care teams work, as well as

Topic 3: Understanding systems

and the impact of complexity on
patient care
Students are introduced to the concept
that a health-care system is not one but
many systems made up of organizations,
departments, units, services and
practices. The huge number of
relationships between patients, carers,
health-care providers, support staff,
administrators, bureaucrats, economists
and community members as well as the
relationships between the various healthand non-health-care services add to this
complexity. This topic gives medical
students a basic understanding of
complex organizations using a systems
approach. The lessons from other
industries are used to show students the
benefits of a systems approach. When
students think in systems they will be
better able to understand why things
break down and have a context for
thinking about solutions. Medical
students need to understand how an

underlying factors involved, is

significantly better than a person
approach, which seeks to blame people
for individual mistakes. Leapes seminal
article in 1994 showed a way to examine
errors in health care, that focused on
learning and fixing errors instead of
blaming those involved. Although his
message has had a profound impact on
many health-care practitioners, there are
still many embedded in a blame culture.
It is crucial that students begin their
vocation understanding the difference
between blame and systems
approaches.

techniques for including patients and

their families as part of the healthcare
team. There is some evidence that
multidisciplinary teams improve the
quality of services and lower costs.
Good teamwork has also been shown to
reduce errors and improve care for
patients, particularly those with chronic
illnesses. This topic presents the
underlying knowledge required to
become an effective team member.
However, knowledge alone will not make
a student a good team player. They need
to understand the culture of their
workplace, and how it impacts upon
team functioning.

Topic 6: Understanding and

managing clinical risk

Topic 5: Understanding and learning

from errors

Clinical risk management is primarily

concerned with maintaining safe systems
of care. It usually involves a number of
organizational systems or processes that
are designed to identify, manage and
prevent adverse outcomes. Clinical risk
management focuses on improving the
quality and safety of health-care services
by identifying the circumstances and
opportunities that put patients at risk of
harm and acting to prevent or control
those risks. Risk management involves
every level of the organization so it is
essential that medical students
understand the objectives and relevance
of the clinical risk management strategies
in their workplace. Managing complaints
and making improvements,
understanding the main types of
incidents in the hospital or clinic that are

Understanding why health-care

professionals make errors is necessary
for appreciating how poorly designed
systems and other factors contribute to
errors in the health-care system. While
errors are a fact of life, the consequences
of errors on patient welfare and staff can
be devastating. Medical students and
other healthcare professionals need to
understand how and why systems break
down and why mistakes are made so
they can act to prevent and learn from
them. An understanding of health-care
errors
also provides the basis for making
improvements and implementing
effective reporting systems. Students will
learn that a systems approach to errors,
which seeks to understand all the

Topic 8: Engaging with patients and

carers

known to lead to adverse events,

knowing how to use information from
complaints, incident reports, litigation,
coroners reports and quality
improvement reports to control risks are
all examples of clinical risk management
strategies.

Students are introduced to the concept

that the health-care team includes the
patient and/or their carer, and that
patients and carers play a key role in
ensuring safe health care by: (i) helping
with the diagnosis; (ii) deciding about
appropriate treatments; (iii) choosing an
experienced and safe provider; (iv)
ensuring that treatments are
appropriately administered; and (v)
identifying adverse events and taking
appropriate action. The health-care
system underutilizes the expertise
patients can bring such as their
knowledge about their symptoms, pain,
preferences and attitudes to risk. They
are a second pair of eyes if something
unexpected happens. They can alert a
health-care worker if the medication they
are about to receive is not what they
usually take, which acts as a warning to
the team that checks should be made.
Research has shown that there are fewer
errors and better treatment outcomes
when there is good communication
between patients and their carers, and
when patients are fully informed and
educated about their medications. Poor
communication between doctors,
patients and their carers has also
emerged as a common reason for
patients taking legal action against
health-care providers.

Topic 7: Introduction to quality

improvement methods
Over the last decade, health care has
successfully adopted a variety of quality
improvement methods used by other
industries. These methods provide
clinicians with the tools to: (i) identify a
problem; (ii) measure the problem; (iii)
develop a range of interventions
designed to fix the problem; and (iv) test
whether the interventions worked.
Healthcare leaders such as Tom Nolan,
Brent James, Don Berwick and others
have applied quality improvement
principles to develop quality
improvement methods for health
clinicians and managers. The
identification and examination of each
step in the process of health-care
delivery is the bedrock for this
methodology. When students examine
each step in the process of care they
begin to see how the pieces of care are
connected and measurable.
Measurement is critical for safety
improvement. This topic introduces the
student to improvement methods and
the tools, activities and techniques that
can be incorporated into their practice.

Topic 9: Minimizing infection through

improved infection control

Topic 10: Patient safety and invasive

procedures

WHO has a global campaign on infection

control. We thought it important that this
area be included in the Curriculum Guide
not only for consistency but also
because along with surgical care and
medications these areas constitute a
significant percentage of adverse events
suffered by patients. The problem of
infection control in health-care settings is
now well established, with health careassociated infections being a major
cause of death and disability worldwide.
There are numerous guidelines available
to help doctors and nurses minimize the
risks of cross-infection. Patients who
have surgery or an invasive procedure
are known to be particularly prone to
infections and account for about 40% of
all hospital-acquired infections. The topic
sets out the main causes and types of
infections to enable medical students to
identify those activities that put patients
at risk of infection and to prepare
students to take the appropriate action
to prevent transmission.

WHO has a project on safe surgery. One

of the main causes of errors involving
wrong patients, sites and procedures is
the failure of health-care providers to
communicate effectively (inadequate
processes and checks) in preoperative
procedures. Other examples of wrong
site/procedure/patient are: (i) the wrong
patient in the operating room (OR); (ii)
surgery performed on the wrong side or
site; (iii) wrong procedure performed; (iv)
failure to communicate changes in the
patients condition; (v) disagreements
about stopping procedures; and (vi)
failure to report errors. Minimizing errors
caused by misidentification involves
developing best-practice guidelines for
ensuring the correct patient receives the
right treatment. Students can learn to
understand the value of all patients being
treated in accordance with the correct
site/procedure/patient policies and
protocols. Such learning would include
the benefit of protocols as well as
knowledge of the underlying
principles supporting a uniform approach
to treating and caring for patients. One
study of hand surgeons found that 21%
of surgeons surveyed (n=1050) reported
performing wrong site surgery at least
once during their careers.

Topic 11: Improving medication

safety
An adverse drug reaction has been
defined by WHO as any response to a
medication that is noxious, unintended
and occurs at doses used for
prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy.
Patients are vulnerable to mistakes being
made in any one of the many steps
involved in ordering, dispensing and
administering medications. Medication
errors have been highlighted in studies
undertaken in many countries, including
Australia, which show that about 1% of
all hospital admissions suffer an adverse
event related to the administration of
medications. The causes of medication
errors include a wide range of factors
including: (i) inadequate knowledge of
patients and their clinical conditions; (ii)
inadequate knowledge of the
medications; (iii) calculation errors; (iv)
illegible handwriting; (v) confusion
regarding the name of the medication;
and (vi) poor history taking.

World Health Organization

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Please visit our website at:

www.who.int/patientsafety/en/
http://www.who.int/patient
safety/activities/technical/
medical_curriculum/en/index.html

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