Describing clinical faculty experiences with patient safety and quality care in acute care settings: A mixed methods study.

Background: A major safety initiative in acute care settings across the United States has been to transform hospitals into High Reliability Organizations. The initiative requires developing cognitive awareness, best practices, and infrastructure so that all healthcare providers including clinical faculty are accountable to deliver quality and safe care.

Objective: To describe the experience of baccalaureate clinical nursing faculty concerning safety and near miss events, in acute care hospital settings.

Methods: A mixed method approach was used to conduct the pilot study. Nurse faculty (n=18) completed study surveys from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to track patient safety concerns: Incidents; Near misses; or Unsafe conditions, during one academic semester, within 9 different acute care hospitals. Additionally, seven nurse faculty participated in end of the semester focus groups to discuss the semester long experience.

Results: Clinical faculty identified a total of 24 patient occurrences: 15 Incidents, 1 Near miss event, and 8 Unsafe conditions. Focus group participants (n=7) described benefits and challenges experienced by nursing clinical faculty and students in relation to the culture of safety in acute care hospital settings. Six themes resulted from the content analysis.

Conclusions: Utilizing nursing clinical faculty and students may add significant value to promoting patient safety and the delivery of quality care, within acute care hospital settings.