Self-Assessment of Patient Safety Competence: A Questionnaire Survey of Final Year British and Finnish Pre-Registration Nursing Students.

Background: The integration of patient safety into nursing curricula has been under the spotlight during recent years. Effective patient safety pedagogies and students’ sensitivity to their own role in healthcare have important roles in ensuring safe clinical performances. The patient safety content of pre-registration nursing education has previously been studied, but there is sparse evidence about how nursing students assess their own patient safety competence. Objective: To examine and compare the self-assessment of patient safety competence between British and Finnish nursing students. Methods: The Patient Safety in Nursing Education Questionnaire (PaSNEQ), in the 4-point Likert scale format, was used. We distributed 502 surveys to the final year nursing students, prior to registration in two universities of applied sciences in Finland (n = 299) and two universities in the UK (n = 203) during 2012. Of which, a total of 353 (70%) nursing students in Finland (n=195) and the UK (n=158) responded to the survey. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. Results: Majority of both British and Finnish participants reported that their curriculum did not include a separate module for patient safety. The overall patient safety competence of British and Finnish nursing students was high. However, the British nursing students evaluated their overall patient safety competence significantly higher than Finnish nursing students. Both groups of students ranked their competence to prevent patient safety incidents (attitude) the highest and their competence to act after errors (skill) relatively low. The predictors for having a high level of patient safety competence for nursing students were being British and detecting separate patient safety module in the curriculum. Conclusions: Nurse educators should provide students with more effective practice environment that will prepare them with the patient safety skills needed to respond to errors at work safely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]