Pharmacy students’ attitudes toward patient safety in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: There is a growing recognition of the importance of teaching patient safety to medical students to improve healthcare and minimize patients’ harm; however, few studies evaluated the attitudes of pharmacy students toward patient safety. The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes toward patient safety among pharmacy students in Saudi Arabia. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among pharmacy students from four different universities using a self-administered questionnaire. The Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire III (APSQ-III) was used to measure the attitude toward patient safety. The data were presented using descriptive statistics, such as percentages and means, and compared across gender using Student’s t-test. RESULTS: All of the students who agreed to participate and signed the consent form have completed the questionnaire. Of the 347 pharmacy students who participated in the study; 63% were enrolled in the Doctor of Pharmacy Program and 37% were enrolled in the Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences program. Only 46% of the participants received courses for patient safety mainly in the fourth year of their pharmacy program, and around 93% were interested to learn more about patient safety. A more positive attitude toward patient safety was reported in the domain of ‘confidence to report errors’, ‘working hours as error cause’, ‘patient involvement in reducing error’, and ‘team functioning’. However, most negative attitudes were reported in the domains of ‘Error inevitability’ and ‘Disclosure responsibility’. Gender differences were noticed in the attitude toward patient safety; female students had more positive attitudes in most domains of patient safety. CONCLUSIONS: Around one-half of the surveyed pharmacy students did not receive any courses on patient safety. Our findings emphasize the need for including patient safety courses in the curricula of the different pharmacy programs given the patient safety training importance in improving the quality of patient care.