Nursing students' perspectives and suggestions on patient safety—Implications for developing the nursing education curriculum in Iran ☆ Mojtaba Vaismoradi a, ⁎, Terese Bondas b, c , Melanie Jasper d, 1 , Hannele Turunen c a College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University, United Kingdom b Faculty of Professional Studies, University of Nordland, Bodø, Norway c Department of Nursing Science, Kuopio Campus, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland d College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University, Room 142 Vivian Tower, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom summary article info Keywords: Curriculum Nursing Patient safety Qualitative research Students Background: Nursing students' close involvement in knowledge development about patient safety will enhance the integrity of the current content of nursing education and pave the way towards developing a nursing curriculum that facilitates achieving a safer health-care system. Objectives: This study explores nursing students' perspectives and suggestions on developing patient safety aspects of the nursing curriculum in the context of Iranian culture. Design: A qualitative methodology involving three focus groups with a purposive sample of 18 nursing students from a large Iranian nursing school, utilising directed semi-structured interviews generated data, which was analysed using the content analysis process. Results: Two main themes emerged from content analysis: (1) “involving students fully in patient care” with sub- themes ‘building a trusting relationship between education and practice’, and ‘promoting inter-dependence be- tween health-care providers’, and (2) “structuring patient safety education” with subthemes ‘transforming nursing routines to evidence-based care’, and ‘connecting care to patient safety issues’. Conclusions: The extent of students' involvement in clinical practice and clinical nurses' roles in student educa- tion in practice requires clarification. The curriculum needs to incorporate patient safety aspects throughout, and include interdisciplinary education to ensure compliance with patient safety policies. Moreover, successful implementation of such a curriculum necessitates cooperation from nursing practice and instructors to meet nursing students' expectations. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Global interest to ensure safety in healthcare is driving policy devel- opment, both in improving clinical practice and in transforming health professionals' education (Sherwood, 2011; WHO, 2012). Achieving a high level of safety in hospitals requires a wide range of actions in the recruitment, training and performance improvement of health-care professionals (Leape, 2009; Vaismoradi et al., 2011). Whilst all health-care practitioners share responsibility for ensuring the safety of patient services, being alert to dangers and conducting preventive interventions to maintain patient safety are of major concern to nurses (Lankshear et al., 2008; Butterworth et al., 2011; Kohlbrenner et al., 2011). The level of nurses' skills and knowledge are identified as two of the key factors in enhancing patient safety (Alfredsdottir and Bjornsdottir, 2008). Thus, nurse executives and educators alike have a stake in ensuring nurses are prepared to assure safe patient care (Sherwood and Drenkard, 2007). Health-care practitioner educa- tion needs to include training and assessment of knowledge and skill pertinent to patient safety (Liaw et al., 2011; Okuyama et al., 2011), with nursing education focussing on practise which aims to protect, maintain, and promote safe care through creating and maintaining the highest standards (Stievano et al., 2009; Butterworth et al., 2011). The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2011) developed a comprehensive guide to assist universities in all fields of healthcare to teach patient safety, providing a template for use in nursing schools. Reason (2000) suggests that the management of patient safety issues focuses on different interventions with people, teams, tasks, the workplace and the institution as a whole. The role of people in the commission of errors is central to nursing education (Gregory et al., 2007). Sherwood (2011) and Wilcock (2011) claim that health-care settings lack nurses with patient safety knowledge and skills, possibly Nurse Education Today 34 (2014) 265–270 ☆ Authors' contributions: MV was responsible for the study conception and design. MV performed the data collection and analysis. MV, TB, MJ, HT were responsible for the drafting of the manuscript. TB, MJ, HT made critical revisions to the paper for important intellectual content. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Tehran Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Eastern-Nosrat Street, Touhid Sq., PO. Box: 1419733171, Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 21 66 42 07 39; fax: +98 21 66 90 42 52. E-mail addresses: M.Vaismoradi@swansea.ac.uk (M. Vaismoradi), terese.bondas@uin.no (T. Bondas), m.a.jasper@swansea.ac.uk (M. Jasper), hannele.turunen@uef.fi (H. Turunen). 1 On secondment to the Welsh Government (1st Jan–30th Sept 2012). Tel.: +44 1792 295086; fax: +44 1792 518640. 0260-6917/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2012.10.002 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt