Primary objective:  to determine if watching a video (educational intervention) about a family member’s experience with a serious medical error improved third-year medical students’ performances disclosing an error.

Secondary objectives:  to determine if the educational intervention improved knowledge/attitudes about safety and satisfaction with the curriculum.

Adverse events occur in >25% of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries. The Neurology Milestones and AAMC Entrustable Professional Activities require that trainees contribute to patient safety. We found only one publication about disclosure of medical errors in stroke patients. There were no studies in the neurology literature utilizing the validated and published Error Disclosure Rating Scale or the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire--one of the best-studied surveys on patient safety culture.

After approval by the IRB, 32 neurology clerkship students were randomized to the standard curriculum (lectures on root-cause analysis and error disclosure) or the standard curriculum plus the educational intervention. Next, students completed the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. Then, students read a vignette in which they committed a serious medical error and disclosed the error to a standardized patient. A faculty member and standardized patient rated them utilizing the Error Disclosure Rating Scale. Students received individualized feedback and completed a post-course survey.

Independent t-test was performed. Mean scores for the standard curriculum (n=17) and intervention (n=15) groups follow:  Faculty Error Disclosure Rating Scale 16.3 and 20.4 (p< 0.0001) d=1.6803; Standardized Patient Error Disclosure Rating Scale 16.1 and 20.3 (p< 0.0001) d=1.6292; Safety Attitudes Questionnaire 3.8 and 3.9 (p=0.8) d=0.0873; and Post-Course Survey 4.2 and 4.7 (p=0.02) d=0.6760.

The educational intervention resulted in very meaningful and highly statistically significant improvements in medical students’ ability to disclose an error. Satisfaction with the curriculum was also significantly improved in the intervention group. The educational intervention could be used to improve curricular content on disclosure of medical errors.