Patient Safety and Nursing Education

The primary responsibility for all nursing professionals as patient advocates, is delivering safe, effective and prudent care. Creating a culture of safety in healthcare systems is the goal of leaders in the patient safety movement. Quality and Safety Education for Nurses¹ (QSEN) recommended that nurses are to be prepared with essential quality and safety competencies such as patient-centered care, evidencebased practice, teamwork and collaboration, quality improvement and informatics. Educators of both pre and post-licensure nurses are challenged to prepare nurses to match with the competencies needed to integrate quality and safety with systems approach in creating a patient safety culture. Inclusion of Human Factor Theory (HFT) and Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) in the nursing curriculum could act as a foundation towards quality education, to produce competent safe practitioners. Nursing education system ensures patient safety by modifications to curricula content, facilitation of multi-disciplinary processes, inclusion of educational methods facilitating the core competencies and faculty development. Educators are encouraged to engage in a culture shift whereby student error is considered from an education systems perspective. Educators and schools are challenged to look within and systematically review how program structures and processes may be contributing to student error and undermining patient safety. Graduates prepared with necessary competencies will become leaders in shifting the healthcare culture to strengthen patient safety thus nursing education act as catalyst for the patient safety movement.