Authors

  1. Mckay, Mary DNP, APN, CNE
  2. DeSantis, Joseph P. PhD, APRN, ACRN, FAAN

Article Content

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses identified essential core quality and safety competencies for prelicensure nursing students. Nursing students require opportunities to attain these core competencies to prepare them for safe practice. This project use faculty-developed short video vignettes depicting clinical scenarios involving errors and near misses including an insulin-related medication error as the basis for an asynchronous online discussion forum. Factors embedded in the videos included a suboptimal change of shift report and intimidating behaviors by the patient's family. The students were asked to identify root causes, evidence-based strategies to prevent future occurrences, and the proper nursing actions after the incident, and to respond to at least 2 peer discussion posts. After institutional review board approval, a content analysis of the discussion board posts revealed themes including perceived power differentials, horizontal violence, and the lack of empowerment, which played a role in error commission. These identified themes are associated with an increased risk of nursing error and prompted a thorough in-class discussion about speaking up and taking action in unsafe patient situations. The use of video-based vignettes was beneficial because students were encouraged to address verbal and nonverbal behaviors associated with errors versus a written case study approach.