Speaking up culture of medical students within an academic teaching hospital: Need of faculty working in patient safety.

Schwappach, David; Sendlhofer, Gerald; Kamolz, Lars-Peter; Köle, Wolfgang; Brunner, Gernot (2019). Speaking up culture of medical students within an academic teaching hospital: Need of faculty working in patient safety. PLoS ONE, 14(9), e0222461. Public Library of Science 10.1371/journal.pone.0222461

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BACKGROUND

Speaking up behavior is a manifestation the culture of safety in an organization; however, withholding voice is commonly observed. Within one academic teaching hospital, it was the aim to assess students' speaking up behaviors and perceived culture in order to stimulation of the academic development in terms of patient safety.

METHODS

Survey amongst medical students using a validated questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

326 individuals completed the questionnaire (response rate 24%). 37% of responders were in their 5th- 6th clinical term, 32% were in their 7th-8th term and 31% were in the 9th-12th term. 69% of students had a specific safety concern in the past four weeks, 48% had observed an error and 68% noticed the violation of a patient safety rule. Though students perceived specific patient safety concerns, 56% did not speak up in a critical situation. All predefined barriers seemed to play an important role in inhibiting students' voicing concerns. The scores on the psychological safety scale were overall moderately favourable. Students felt little encouraged by colleagues and, in particular, by supervisors to speak up.

CONCLUSION

Speaking up behaviour of students was assessed for the first time in an Austrian academic teaching hospital. The higher the term the more frequent students reported perceived patient safety concerns or rule violations and withholding voice. These results suggest the need to adapt the curriculum concept of the faculty in order to address patient safety as a relevant topic.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM)

UniBE Contributor:

Schwappach, David

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 360 Social problems & social services

ISSN:

1932-6203

Publisher:

Public Library of Science

Language:

English

Submitter:

Doris Kopp Heim

Date Deposited:

19 Sep 2019 14:50

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:30

Publisher DOI:

10.1371/journal.pone.0222461

PubMed ID:

31514203

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.133387

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/133387

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