The patient safety was identified as a key priority in the seminal Institute of Medicine [IOM] Report (2000), To Err is Human – Building a Safer Health System (IOM and the Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, 2000). However, it is currently estimated the one in 18 patients in Canadian hospitals experience a preventable, harmful safety incident (CIHI;CPSI, 2016). A growing body of literature has contributed to strategies to reduce patient safety incidents (PSIs) and near misses within the clinical setting. This work must also be integrated in the health professions educations. This is of critical importance for nursing students, as nurses have been identified as the health professional most likely to be familiar with incident reporting (Mitchell, Schuster, Smith, Pronovost, & Wu, 2016). Given student nurses often enter clinical environments for the first time during their academic placements, it is not until that experience that they gain exposure to the realities of patient safety incidents as novice practitioners. How students learn about and interpret patient safety and incident reporting within the context of clinical placements remains to be explored.
Purpose/Methods: This scoping review was guided by the Arksey and O’Malley framework (2005), and addressed the question: From the current evidence, what is known about nursing students’ understanding and experiences of patient safety incidents and incident reporting while practising in a clinical setting? The following databases were searched: CINAHL Plus, MEDLINE, Scholars Portal, and ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health. The included articles were: (1) peer-reviewed; (2) described study participants are undergraduate nursing students active in clinical placements; and (3) identified patient safety is the primary focus Based on the inclusion criteria, studies were selected and data extraction was conducted by two independent reviewers. The data were collated, summarized and reported in narrative form. All members of the research team contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the findings.
Results:
There are 44 articles in this review, and the themes include: (1) the types of incidents reported; (2) how nursing students engage in incident reporting; (3) student factors related to clinical incidents; and (4) environmental factors relevant to the student experience of incidents.
Conclusion:
In this review, nursing students’ perceptions of patient safety incidents and the complexity of factors informing their decision to report incidents during clinical placements are described. The results have implications for educators seeking to improve student understanding and application of patient safety principles within clinical settings. The results of the scoping review will inform the next phase of the study, in which an incident reporting tool, tailored for nursing students will be developed.