Innovative Patient Safety Curriculum Using iPAD Game (PASSED) Improved Patient Safety Concepts in Undergraduate Medical Students

Abstract

Introduction

While healthcare outcomes have improved significantly, the complex management of diseases in the hospitals has also escalated the risks in patient safety. Therefore, in the process of training medical students to be proficient in medical knowledge and skills, the importance of patient safety cannot be neglected. A new innovation using mobile apps gaming system (PAtient Safety in Surgical EDucation—PASSED) to teach medical students on patient safety was created. Students were taught concepts of patient safety followed by a gaming session using iPad games created by us. This study aims to evaluate the outcome of patient safety perception using the PASSED games created.

Methods

An interactive iPad game focusing on patient safety issues was created by the undergraduate education team in the Department of Surgery, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. The game employed the unique touched-screen feature with clinical scenarios extracted from the hospital sentinel events. Some of the questions were time sensitive, with extra bonus marks awarded if the student provided the correct answer within 10 s. Students could reattempt the questions if the initial answer was wrong. However, this entailed demerit points. Third-year medical students posted to the Department of Surgery experienced this gaming system in a cohort of 55–60 students. Baseline understanding of the students on patient safety was evaluated using Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire III (APSQ-III) prior to the game. A 20 min talk on concept of patient safety using the WHO Patient Safety Guidelines was conducted. Following this, students downloaded the apps from ITune store and played with the game for 20–30 min. The session ended with the students completing the postintervention questionnaire.

Results

A total of 221 3rd year medical students responded to the survey during the PASSED session. Majority of the students felt that the PASSED game had trained them to understand the processes of medical error (p < 0.001), that their understanding on patient safety issues improved (p = 0.007), and the training prepared them to prevent medical errors (p < 0.001). Many students also recognized the importance of error reporting, where they felt comfortable reporting errors committed by themselves (p < 0.001) or by other people (p < 0.001). They also felt comfortable discussing with the supervisor on medical errors (p < 0.001). Students responded that better teamwork will reduce medical errors (p = 0.003), and teaching teamwork skills will reduce medical errors (p = 0.002). After the PASSED session, students felt that patients could play an important role in preventing medical errors (p < 0.001). They felt that patient safety should be emphasized in undergraduate training (p = 0.024). The level of understanding about concepts of patient safety was also found to improve progressively from the 2nd posting to the 5th posting for both the pre-PASSED and post-PASSED intervention. The pre-PASSED scores for Posting 2 (3.59 ± 1.931), Posting 3 (4.11 ± 1.833), Posting 4 (4.84 ± 1.653), and Posting 5 (4.88 ± 1.642) were significantly higher than the post-PASSED scores for Posting 2 (4.46 ± 2.020), Posting 3 (5.17 ± 1.845), Posting 4 (5.88 ± 1.843), and Posting 5 (5.80 ± 1.843), respectively (p < 0.001).

Conclusion

Using iPad game (PASSED) to enhance the patient safety teaching has successfully improved the awareness and understanding of patient safety in clinical practice. This training model can be used to teach more senior medical students on the complexity of patient safety issues in medicine.

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Grouping of scenarios according to the area of interest