Exploring the use of observational tools in improving patient safety learning among preregistration healthcare students: A scoping review protocol

Objective

University of Leicester with the support of Wellcome Trust developed and piloted an observational patient safety tool among final year medical students iteratively from 2016 – 2019. The aim of this review is to map and identify if this approach of learning has been adopted elsewhere so as to incorporate their recommendations in this project.

Introduction

Patient safety education has widely been prioritized as an essential learning in a preregistration health curriculum. Despite this recognition, the students are not well equipped with the knowledge on providing a safe care. Moreover, there has been a wide variation in the teaching approaches and a vast majority of them are focused at learning away from the real time clinical environment.

Inclusion criteria

The study will search for the pedagogical research methods that have tested the patient safety observational learning tools among healthcare students. For this, we will include full text peer reviewed articles from original research published in an English language from 2009 globally.

Method 

The review will follow the scoping review as set out by JBI Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist. We will search MEDLINE, CINAHL, SCOPUS, WEB OF SCIENCE, GOOGLE SCHOLAR and THE COCHRANE LIBRARY for identifying the potential papers. We will extract the data in MS Excel template designed for the study and appraise the paper quality using a Best Evidence Medical Evidence (BEME) checklist. We will share the report among the wider project team, refine the observational learning tool and will utilize the finding to shape the Ph.D. project.