A national assessment on patient safety curricula in undergraduate medical education: results from the 2012 clerkship directors in internal medicine survey.
In this survey of clerkship directors in Internal Medicine, researchers found hat less than half of medical schools in the United States and Canada have a formal patient safety curriculum. Curricula tended to focus on infection control, hand-offs and signouts, and medication safety whereas safety topics such as human factors engineering, never events, and the implications of electronic heath records in safety were less likely to be taught. Barriers to curriculum implementation included lack of time (both faculty time and overall curriculum time), lack of financial support for faculty, and lack of trained faculty. Only 20% of clerkship directors were satisfied with student competency in patient safety after the clerkship.