10 free, exam-style Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) practice questions with answers and explanations. No signup required. Work through them below, then take the full free CPPS practice test to study every exam domain.
The CPPS exam has 120 questions and runs 2 hours 30 minutes.
These 10 free CPPS questions are organized by exam domain, so you can see how each part of the Certified Professional in Patient Safety blueprint is tested. Reveal the answer and explanation under each question.
A pharmacist accidentally dispenses the wrong dose of a medication because she was interrupted during the dispensing process. According to Just Culture, what is the MOST appropriate managerial response?
Correct answer: D - Investigate the system factors that allowed the interruption and console the pharmacist
During a surgical time-out, a circulating nurse notices that the consent form lists the left knee but the site marking is on the right knee. Despite feeling intimidated by the surgeon's reputation, she stops the procedure. This action BEST demonstrates:
Correct answer: B - Psychological safety enabling a team member to speak up regardless of hierarchy
A physician is told by the previous shift that a patient 'is just drug-seeking' and does not perform a thorough evaluation. The patient is later found to have a fracture. The physician's reliance on the initial characterization BEST demonstrates:
Correct answer: A - Anchoring bias
A nurse adjusts her medication administration routine to accommodate an unexpected patient emergency on the unit, successfully managing both situations without error. A Safety II perspective would view this as:
Correct answer: B - An example of adaptive performance demonstrating successful complexity management
A patient safety officer discovers that surgical count procedures have been shortened over time, with some steps being consistently skipped. No retained foreign objects have occurred yet. The officer should:
Correct answer: C - Immediately address the drift and restore full compliance
A hospital's medication error data shows that the highest rate of errors occurs during the administering phase. Which system intervention would MOST directly address this?
Correct answer: A - Implementing barcode medication administration (BCMA) at the point of care
A nurse is caring for 6 patients on a medical unit. She notices that one patient's oxygen saturation has dropped from 96% to 91% over her shift. She is too busy with other patients to investigate immediately. This scenario illustrates:
Correct answer: D - Failure to rescue due to competing demands
During an RCA, the team identifies 'nurse did not follow the medication verification protocol' as a contributing factor. The BEST next step is to:
Correct answer: C - Ask WHY the nurse did not follow the protocol
A failure mode has Severity=8, Occurrence=3, Detection=7. The RPN is:
Correct answer: A - 168
An RCA team recommends mandatory annual training as the SOLE corrective action for a serious medication error. According to the hierarchy of hazard reduction, this is concerning because:
Correct answer: B - Training alone is at the bottom of the hierarchy and insufficient for serious events
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