Abstract
Background
Practical nursing students are students enrolled in a two-year college practical nursing diploma program. They are responsible for providing safe patient care to the patients they care for. Assessing students’ perceptions of their own patient safety competencies can help educators identify gaps in their knowledge and skills and identify, at a curricula level, the concepts and information required to improve the quality of their care.
Purpose
To explore practical nursing students’ confidence in what they are learning about patient safety within their nursing education.
Methods
This cross-sectional descriptive study used a modified version of the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey.
Results
Overall, students expressed the greatest confidence in their abilities to provide care in Clinical Safety topics. More than 75% of the students’ feared punishment when making an error and 88% have difficulty questioning other healthcare providers. Less than 30% of students stated that a system-level focus on errors was taught to them in their education programs.
Conclusions
More investigation is needed to understand what practical nursing students’ fear about the provision of safe care. Additional focus on systems aspects of hazard identification and the prevention of errors needs to be present in nursing education programs.
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