Learning to ensure patient safety in complex health care environments is an internationally recognised concern. This article explores and compares Finnish (n = 22) and British (n = 32) pre-registration nursing students’ important learning events about patient safety from their work placements in health care organisations. Written descriptions were collected with critical incident technique and analysed with inductive content analysis. The learning events were likely to relate to the complex situations and mistakes that occurred in care processes. Reflecting enabled students’ positive learning about patient safety by reinforcing the importance of the topic and learning from errors. Two key themes emerged: prevention of errors and safe actions after errors. In both student groups, the events were likely to deal with medication errors, but only British students described events related to falls risk assessments. Overall, students made important observations, which were underutilised. Moving towards holistic design, joint system approaches and interactive learning between and across health care and health care education organisations might help in developing future health care. © 2015 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.
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