Assessment of Iranian Nursing Students\' Perceptions of Patient Safety in Intensive Care Units

Introduction: Maintaining the patient's safety from the moment a disease is completed to the completion of the treatment process, regardless of whether the patient is treated with a favorable or undesirable outcome, is one of his/her fundamental rights Aim: To determine the nursing students' perception of Guilan Nursing Schools regarding patient safety in intensive care units . Methods: In This analytical cross-sectional study in which 233 senior nursing students of Guilan University of Medical Sciences were recruited through census method to investigate nursing students’ perception of patient safety in critical care units. The research tool was Health Care Professionals Patient Safety Assessment Curriculum Survey (HPPSACS). Data were described and analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics including Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Friedman and Spearman correlation coefficient. Results: Most of the students studied (64.4%) were women. The average age was 23.47 ± 3.61 years.This study showed the majority of students (68.3%) agreed with the inevitability of error in healthcare. In terms of error reporting behaviors, 67% students stated that they had caring errors in their clinical experience. Further, 76.9% students believed that there is a gap between what they know as "best care" and what they provide in daily healthcare. There was a significant relationship between error reporting behaviors and age (P= 0.006), and semester (P = 0.001), and university (P= 0.001), comfort with skills and student work experience (P=0.004) and Understanding safety with student experience (P= 0.018). Conclusion: The students’ perception of patient safety was higher than mean, although more than half of the students reported unacceptable error reporting behaviors. It means that appropriate educational planning is needed to acquire the skills.