Nursing Students' Reports of Patient Safety Incidents and Reasons During Clinical Placements: A Secondary Analysis of the International Data

ABSTRACT

Clinical placements expose nursing students to patient safety incidents and provide important opportunities for learning about safe care. This study explored how nursing students in four countries recognized and interpreted patient safety incidents encountered or witnessed during clinical practice, including perceived contributing factors. A secondary qualitative content analysis was conducted using narrative data from 1442 undergraduate nursing students in the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia, and Türkiye. In total, 287 incident descriptions and 263 explanations of perceived reasons were analyzed using an inductive–deductive approach supported by descriptive frequency counts. Medication safety incidents and patient falls were most frequently reported, alongside infection prevention breaches, missed or inadequate care, communication failures, adverse outcomes, and environmental hazards. Students described incidents as multifactorial, involving patient and contextual factors, organizational and system conditions, and human and professional factors. Cross‐country differences reflected patterns within the analyzed narratives rather than differences in incident prevalence or quality of care. The findings support practice‐integrated patient safety education, effective supervision, structured reflection and debriefing, clear reporting pathways, and psychologically and emotionally safe, nonpunitive learning environments.