Implications for practice and research

• Improvement of nurses’ confidence to act as patient advocates should begin during undergraduate training and may rely on structured tools to develop assertiveness.

• Research should determine the best training framework for nursing curricula and evaluate the impact of assertiveness training on safety outcomes at the workplace.

Context

The importance of patient safety as a healthcare priority and goal has grown steadily in the past years. Nevertheless, specific patient safety training provided to nurses and other healthcare professionals is still incipient—especially in terms of communication skills to challenge unsafe practice within multidisciplinary teams. In situations in which patient safety is endangered by the …