Evaluating Quality and Safety Competencies among Baccalaureate Nursing Students in the Philippines

Abstract

Abstract

Patient safety is a global issue that affects countries at all levels of development. In response to the call of the World Health Assembly (WHA), the Philippines is reinforcing and institutionalizing the implementation of quality assurance where patient safety is regarded as one of the key dimensions of quality care. This study investigates on to what extent quality and safety contents are covered in the nursing curriculum and to assess baccalaureate nursing students level of skills and attitudes of quality and safety competencies in Philippines. Subjects (N=752) were graduating fourth year nursing students from four of the top 10 nursing schools in the Philippines. The design of the study is descriptive. The Student Evaluation Survey (SES) which consists of three primary questions related to (1) knowledge: whether and where content was covered in the curriculum; (2) skills: self-reported level of preparedness to perform skills; and (3) attitudes: perceived importance of the skills was used to evaluate the quality and patient safety competencies of the students. Quality and patient safety competencies consist of six competencies: Patient-centered Care, Teamwork and collaboration, Evidence-based practice, Quality improvement, Safety and Informatics. Descriptive statistics were used to gauge the outlook on the quality and safety knowledge topics covered in the curriculum and students levels of quality and safety skill and attitude. One way ANOVA was used to compare students skill and attitude differences respectively according to competencies across the four schools and by school at .05 levels of significance and Scheffe was used for Post Hoc analysis. Results showed that for knowledge, classroom (59%-88%) was the most common venue of learning for all the competencies and Informatics got the highest coverage in the classroom. Evidence-based practice was covered the most in assignment and Patient-centered care for clinical experience. Except in Informatics competency, less than 10% students answered that competency knowledge topics were covered through lab/simulation. In terms of students levels of preparedness to perform quality and patient safety skills, there were statistically significant differences among competencies (F=64.27, p=0.000). Patient-centered care and Teamwork and collaboration got the highest mean for skill with 3.28 followed by quality improvement with 3.10, Evidence-based practice (3.07), Safety (3.01), and Informatics with 2.88. All the competencies for attitude obtained more than a 3.5 mean which indicate that students perceived it as essential, for them to learn the needed skills and be prepared in their first year of practice. This study recommended to have a moving force to develop the quality and safety curriculum in the country in order to improve the students competencies. Since patient safety curriculum is not yet implemented in the country, further studies are suggested to see the differences and impacts of having a patient safety curriculum to the baccalaureate nursing students after implementing the patient safety curriculum of WHO-Philippines.