EXPLORING NURSE EDUCATORS' INSIGHTS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON TEACHING SAFE NURSING CARE

Introduction: In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare environment, providing safe and quality care is an urgent global challenge and nurse educators play a key role in shaping future.

Goals and Methods: The aim of the study was to explore nurse educators’ experience of teaching safe nursing care. Qualitative descriptive study was carried out to meet the study objectives and was approved by the ethics committee. Two universities in Slovakia were approached in which nursing students are educated in the bachelor’s degree programme and nurse educators actively involved in teaching clinical subjects in the undergraduate programme were selected using the convenience sampling method. A total of 17 nurse educators were approached, of which 13 participated. The study was conducted in February 2024. The nurse educators answered eleven semi-structured questions on the topic of patient safety teaching. Summative content analysis was used; the initial step involves quantifying specific words or content in the text to understand their contextual usage. Moreover, a summative approach also includes latent content analysis, which reflected the coding process and involved free line-by-line coding that resulted in the development of subthemes and themes. Within the coding process, Atlas.ti software was used.

Results: The study found three meaningful themes and ten subthemes. The first theme was “Interpretation of safe provision of nursing care”, the second theme was “Teaching patient safety – characteristics and requirements” and the third and last theme was “Reflections on the course of teaching patient safety”. The results advocated for reinforcing patient safety education in undergraduate programmes by introducing dedicated coursework on safe nursing care with enhancing the preparation of educators.

Conclusion: The study results highlight the critical need to incorporate patient safety education into nursing programs and provide hands-on practical experiences to better equip students for the challenges they will face in real-world healthcare settings.