A Spanish-language patient safety questionnaire to measure medical and nursing students' attitudes and knowledge

• Main Authors: José J. Mira, Isabel M. Navarro, Mercedes Guilabert, Rodrigo Poblete, Astolfo L. Franco, Pilar Jiménez, Margarita Aquino, Francisco J. Fernández-Trujillo, Susana Lorenzo, Julián Vitaller, Yohana Díaz de Valle, Carlos Aibar, Jesús M. Aranaz, José A. De Pedro
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Spanish; Portuguese
• Published: Pan American Health Organization 2015
• Subjects: Conocimientos; actitudes y práctica en salud; seguridad del paciente; cuestionarios; estudiantes; Chile; Colombia; El Salvador; Espana; Guatemala; América Latina; Medicine; R; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doaj.org/article/2a40bdd202eb48f0bf48690e70756639

OBJECTIVE: To design and validate a questionnaire for assessing attitudes and knowledge about patient safety using a sample of medical and nursing students undergoing clinical training in Spain and four countries in Latin America. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, a literature review was carried out and total of 786 medical and nursing students were surveyed at eight universities from five countries (Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Spain) to develop and refine a Spanish-language questionnaire on knowledge and attitudes about patient safety. The scope of the questionnaire was based on five dimensions (factors) presented in studies related to patient safety culture found in PubMed and Scopus. Based on the five factors, 25 reactive items were developed. Composite reliability indexes and Cronbach's alpha statistics were estimatedfor each factor, and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess validity. After a pilot test, the questionnaire was refined using confirmatory models, maximum-likelihood estimation, and the variance-covariance matrix (as input). Multiple linear regression models were used to confirm external validity, considering variables related to patient safety culture as dependent variables and the five factors as independent variables. RESULTS: The final instrument was a structured five-point Likert self-administered survey (the "Latino Student Patient Safety Questionnaire") consisting of 21 items grouped into five factors. Compound reliability indexes (Cronbach's alpha statistic) calculated for the five factors were about 0.7 or higher. The results of the multiple linear regression analyses indicated good model fit (goodness-of-fit index: 0.9). Item-total correlations were higher than 0.3 in all cases. The convergent-discriminant validity was adequate. CONCLUSIONS: The questionnaire designed and validated in this study assesses nursing and medical students' attitudes and knowledge about patient safety. This instrument could be used to indirectly evaluate whether or not ...