Patient safety awareness among undergraduate medical students in Pakistani medical school

Objective: To measure the level of awareness of patient safety among undergraduate medical students in Pakistani Medical School and to find the difference with respect to gender and prior experience with medical error. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the University of Lahore (UOL), Pakistan from January to March 2017, and comprised final year medical students. Data was collected using a questionnaire ‘APSQ-III’ on 7 point Likert scale. Eight questions were reverse coded. Survey was anonymous. SPSS package 20 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Questionnaire was filled by 122 students, with 81% response rate. The best score 6.17 was given for the ‘team functioning’, followed by 6.04 for ‘long working hours as a cause of medical error’. The domains regarding involvement of patient, confidence to report medical errors and role of training and learning on patient safety scored high in the agreed range of >5. Reverse coded questions about ‘professional incompetence as an error cause’ and ‘disclosure of errors’ showed negative perception. No significant differences of perceptions were found with respect to gender and prior experience with medical error (p= >0.05). Conclusion: Undergraduate medical students at UOL had a positive attitude towards patient safety. However, there were misconceptions about causes of medical errors and error disclosure among students and patient safety education needs to be incorporated in medical curriculum of Pakistan.