The Effect of Flipped Classroom Teaching Method on Medical Error Tendencies

"The World Health Organization (WHO) defines patient safety as efforts to minimize preventable harm that may occur during a patient's interaction with healthcare services. Patient safety encompasses all areas, from accurate and effective medications to safe injections, surgical procedures, and standards in other invasive procedures. Medical errors, which pose a significant risk to patient safety, have become a multidimensional issue, leading to accidents and deaths, and raising ethical-legal issues.

While there are different definitions of medical errors in the literature, the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations defines a medical error as "inappropriate and unethical behavior by a healthcare professional, resulting in harm to the patient due to inadequate and negligent behavior in professional practices."

Medical errors made by healthcare workers are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in hospitalized patients. Nurses, being the healthcare professionals who spend the longest and most continuous time with patients in the delivery of healthcare services, play a crucial role in ensuring patient safety. Teaching safe patient care is a fundamental element of nursing education. The knowledge and experiences gained during nursing education impact students' competence in ensuring and improving patient safety in their caregiving practices. Insufficient skill training and the learning process are major contributors to medical errors.

Nursing students who do not learn and experience basic nursing skills adequately may pose a risk of harm to the patients they care for. Students lacking clinical experience are at a higher risk of making unwanted errors in patient care. Therefore, it is important to increase the knowledge and awareness of nursing students regarding medical errors throughout their education.

Comprising complementary theoretical and practical sections, nursing education aims to provide students with fundamental knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Today's students, predominantly from Generation Y and Z, exhibit advanced thinking and quick information acquisition processes. They are willing to embrace change and constantly seek new approaches. Technology is a symbol of many aspects of their lives, and these generations are considered superior to Generation X in terms of technology use.

Educational organizations emphasize the need for nursing educators to train more competent nurses. Studies suggest that traditional teaching methods do not allow nurses to fulfill their expected responsibilities. The flipped classroom teaching method, combining the advantages of both traditional and web-based learning, encourages active learning, and enhances student performance. It reverses the traditional flow of learning, allowing students to learn the material that the instructor would traditionally present in the classroom outside of class hours through electronic materials. In-class time is then used for discussion of the material and reinforcement exercises to deepen and strengthen learning.

Students complete the relatively easy first steps, such as listening to the lecture, on their own at home. Difficult and complex applications related to higher-level steps are performed in the classroom, using active learning methods under the guidance of the instructor. This approach helps students develop critical thinking skills, learn the subject, reason, and apply current research results.

Both international and national organizations emphasize the need for nursing educators to train more competent nurses. Studies suggest that the traditional teaching method does not allow nurses to fulfill their expected responsibilities, while the flipped classroom teaching method could be a useful method for students to learn basic concepts and increase motivation and success.

Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to impart certain skills to future nurses, address the increase in the number of students, and adapt nursing education to the realities of Generation Y and Z students. Nursing education today prioritizes student-centered education and learning. The use of new methods and models in education is necessary, especially given the increasing number of students and limited resources in our country.

Requirements and conditions necessitate the exploration and implementation of new models such as flipped learning in nursing education; therefore, this research has been decided to be conducted. This study aims to determine the impact of the flipped classroom learning method on the medical error tendencies of intern nursing students. It is believed that the results of this study will contribute to raising awareness of potential medical errors, preventing them, and providing valuable insights for the improvement of nursing education. As the importance of patient safety increases due to the rising number of medical errors, this research is deemed necessary."