A Virtual Interprofessional Room of Horrors Experience to Improve Medical and Pharmacy Students’ Knowledge on Patient Safety

Background:
Given the constant need for delivering safe care in today’s healthcare settings, there is an ever-growing necessity to educate health professional students about patient safety and prepare them to identify and address medical and medication errors as an interprofessional team. Due to COVID-19, many interprofessional experiences swiftly pivoted to virtual delivery. The aim of this virtual patient safety experience was to improve the knowledge of third year medical and pharmacy students on quality improvement (QI) and hazards of hospitalization.
Methodology:
This experience was modeled after the “Patient Safety Room of Horrors” published by Farnan and colleagues and modified for virtual delivery in an interprofessional setting. Prior to the session, students were provided a mock patient chart to review and asked to complete a pre-session assessment questionnaire. During the Zoom session, students were divided into small interprofessional teams and sent to breakout rooms to review a set of 7 pictures of the patient in their room depicting common hospital-based safety threats. After reviewing the chart and room pictures, a team’ scribe documented the top ten medical errors/safety hazards identified and the team’s choice of one hazard with its proposed QI intervention to prevent its reoccurrence. The session concluded with a debrief and a post-session assessment questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were performed.
Results:
415 medical and pharmacy students completed the interprofessional room of horrors experience between May 2021 and April 2022 in 5 cohorts. Pre and post-assessment questionnaire were analyzed for all respondents while teams’ answers identifying hazards were evaluated for 34 teams (preliminary data). There was a 27% increase in QI theory knowledge while students reported a 53% increase in their self-perceived QI knowledge. 90% of students reported that they were able to identify actions the interprofessional team members can take to improve patient safety. Almost all teams identified mislabeled medications, allergies, fall risk, and lack of personal protective equipment among the top ten errors. Less than 10% of the teams reported inappropriate catheter use, deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, and poor hand hygiene among the errors.
Conclusion:
This virtual interprofessional room of horrors experience was feasible and effective in engaging medical and pharmacy students with an interprofessional safety-focused content and improving their knowledge of QI and hospital-related hazards.
Lessons learned:
Medical and pharmacy students can learn to recognize and address common safety hazards in a hospital setting within their teams.