title: Validation of a survey tool to assess the patient safety attitudes of pharmacy students.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Patient safety education is a key strategy to minimise harm, and is increasingly being introduced into junior pharmacy curricula. However, currently there is no valid and reliable survey tool to measure the patient safety attitudes of pharmacy students. This study aimed to validate a modified survey tool, originally developed by Madigosky et al, to evaluate patient safety attitudes of junior pharmacy students.
  
  
  METHODS
  A 23-item cross-sectional patient safety survey tool was utilised to evaluate first and second year pharmacy students' attitudes during May 2013 with both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses performed to understand the psychometric properties of the survey tool and to establish construct validity.
  
  
  METHODS
  Undergraduate university students in Sydney, Australia
  
  
  METHODS
  245 first year and 201 second year students enrolled in the Bachelor of Pharmacy Programme at The University of Sydney, Australia in May 2013.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After exploratory factor analysis on first year student responses (55.76% variance explained) and confirmatory factor analysis on second year responses, a 5-factor model consisting of 14 items was obtained with satisfactory model fit (χ(2) (66)=112.83, p<0.001, RMSEA=0.06, CFI=0.91) and nesting between year groups (Δχ(2)(7)=3.079, p=0.878). The five factors measured students' attitudes towards: (1) being quality improvement focused, (2) internalising errors regardless of harm, (3) value of contextual learning, (4) acceptability of questioning more senior healthcare professionals' behaviour and (5) attitude towards open disclosure.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study has established the reliability and validity of a modified survey tool to evaluate patient safety attitudes of pharmacy students, with the potential for use in course development and evaluation.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Ramesh L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Walpola
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Romano A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Fois
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Stephen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Carter
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Centre for Education and Research on Ageing, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Concord, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: McLachlan
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Timothy F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004512:Education, Pharmacy / Q000592:standards*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D061214:Patient Safety; D010593:Pharmaceutical Services / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013339:Students, Pharmacy / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: EDUCATION & TRAINING (see Medical Education & Training); PRIMARY CARE