The Perceptions and Experience of Surgical Trainees Related to Patient Safety Improvement and Incident Reporting: Structured Interviews With 612 Surgical Trainees

Background We undertook a prospective qualitative study to ascertain the perceptions and experience of trainee doctors in the first two years of formal core surgical training related to patient safety improvement and incident reporting. We sought to explore the beliefs, knowledge and opinions of core surgical trainees related to patient safety improvement, their understanding of existing patient safety initiatives and their experience and attitudes to incident reporting. Methods We identified 1133 doctors in formal core surgical training posts in the United Kingdom at this time, and we contacted these doctors to invite them to participate in our study. We received responses from 687 (60.6%) core surgical trainees, and 612 trainees (54%) agreed to participate. The study participants underwent an interview using structured questions asked by trained assessors with an opportunity to explore any particular themes identified by the trainee in more detail. Qualitative data related to the knowledge, experience and perceptions of safety improvement and incident reporting were collected. Results Overall, 163 surgical trainees (26.6%) reported that they felt that they could impact patient safety positively. A total of 222 trainees (36.3%) had been involved in or witnessed an adverse patient safety event, while 509 trainees (83.2%) reported that they had witnessed a ‘near-miss’ event. Only 81 trainees (13.2%) had submitted a patient safety report at some point in their career. In addition, 536 trainees (87.6%) reported that they considered a patient safety or incident report to be ‘negative’ or ‘seriously negative’ and that they would be discouraged from making these because of the negative connotations associated with them. Of the 81 core surgical trainees who had submitted a patient safety report, only nine trainees (11.1%) reported that they had received a meaningful reply and update following their report. Several themes were identified during the interviews in response to open questions. These included a perception that patient safety improvement is the responsibility of senior surgeons and managers and that surgical trainees did not feel empowered to influence patient safety improvement. Trainees expressed the view that incident reporting reflected negatively on clinicians and the standard of care provided, and there were reports of culture based on blame and the fear of litigation or complaints. Surgical trainees did not feel that incident reporting was an effective tool for patient safety improvement, and those trainees who had made patient safety reports felt that these did not result in change and that they often received no feedback. Conclusions Core surgical trainees report that they are not well engaged in patient safety improvement and that their perceptions and experience of incident reporting are not positive. This represents a missed opportunity. We suggest that in order to recruit the surgical workforce to the improvement work and learning associated with patient safety, opportunities for focused education, training and culture change are needed from the early years of surgical training. In addition, improvements to the processes and systems that allow trainees to engage with safety improvement are needed in order to make these more user-friendly and accessible.