Patient safety skills in primary care: a national survey of GP educators.
There is a consensus that training in patient safety must be integrated into medical education, but less agreement on the core skills that students should be taught. A prior study used a consensus approach to identify the key attributes of a safe practitioner. In this study, a group of educational supervisors of primary care trainees in the United Kingdom were surveyed regarding how they perceived the importance of each of these skills. Clinicians identified many nontechnical skills as being essential for safe practice, including conscientiousness and situational awareness, and agreed that these abilities could be taught through formal curricula. The concepts explored in this study have been used to develop a patient safety curriculum that is being implemented widely in the United Kingdom.