Patient safety principles in family medicine residency accreditation standards and curriculum objectives: Implications for primary care.

Objective: To conduct a thematic analysis of the College of Family Physicians of Canada's (CFPC's) Red Book accreditation standards and the Triple C Competency-based Curriculum objectives with respect to patient safety principles.

Design: Thematic content analysis of the CFPC's Red Book accreditation standards and the Triple C curriculum.

Setting: Canada.

Main Outcome Measures: Coding frequency of the patient safety principles (ie, patient engagement; respectful, transparent relationships; complex systems; a just and trusting culture; responsibility and accountability for actions; and continuous learning and improvement) found in the analyzed CFPC documents.

Results: Within the analyzed CFPC documents, the most commonly found patient safety principle was patient engagement (n = 51 coding references); the least commonly found patient safety principles were a just and trusting culture (n = 5 coding references) and complex systems (n = 5 coding references). Other patient safety principles that were uncommon included responsibility and accountability for actions (n = 7 coding references) and continuous learning and improvement (n = 12 coding references).

Conclusion: Explicit inclusion of patient safety content such as the use of patient safety principles is needed for residency training programs across Canada to ensure the full spectrum of care is addressed, from community-based care to acute hospital-based care. This will ensure a patient safety culture can be cultivated from residency and sustained into primary care practice.