(WHO) Patient Safety Curriculum Guide - CAIPE

6. How to integrate patient
safety learning into your
curriculum
General comments
Patient safety is a relatively new discipline and
introducing any new material into an existing
curriculum is always challenging. What should be
taught? Who should teach it? Where and how
will it fit in with the rest of the curriculum?
What does it replace?
If your professional school is in the process of
renewing an existing curriculum or if you belong
to a new health professional facility, this is
an ideal time to make a case for allocating space
for patient safety education. However, most
health-care professional school curricula are well
established and already full. It is unusual to find
a block of free time waiting for a new area
of study.
This section provides ideas on how to integrate
patient safety teaching and learning into an
existing curriculum. The benefits and challenges
of different approaches will be covered to help
you determine the likely best fit for your school
and to help you anticipate and plan what is
required.
The nature of patient safety education:
ñ it is new;
ñ it spans a number of fields not traditionally
taught to health-care students, such as human
factors, systems thinking, effective teamwork
behaviours and managing error;
ñ it links with many existing and traditional
subjects (applied sciences and clinical sciences)
(see Box A.6.1 for some examples);
ñ it contains new knowledge and performance
elements (see Box A.6.2 for examples);
ñ it is highly contextual.
Box A.6.1. Linking patient safety education with traditional medical and
nursing school subjects
An example of how a patient safety topic, such as correct patient identification, has specific applications
in numerous disciplines in medicine.
Discipline
Obstetrics
Surgery
Ethics
Patient safety application
How are newborn babies identified as belonging to their mother so that babies
are not accidentally mixed up and leave hospital with the wrong parent(s)?
If a patient needs a blood transfusion, what checking processes are in place
to ensure they receive the correct blood type?
How are patients encouraged to speak up if they do not understand why
the doctor is doing something to them that they were not expecting?
41 Part A 6. How to integrate patient safety learning into your curriculum