Abstract
Introduction Patient satisfaction after interacting with medical students has not been studied in India yet. Hence this cross-sectional study was planned to gauge patients’ comfort level on interaction with medical students and observe students’ adherence to the principles of informed consent.
Methods A pilot-tested questionnaire focusing on introduction, consent, and patients’ perception of hospital stay and comfort, was used to interview 200 patients for 4 months. Number of medical students who took a valid consent and introduced themselves as medical students was compared to the seniority of the students. Patients’ responses were analyzed using SSPS version 17.0.
Results Most students did not introduce themselves to patients and did not take consent before history-taking and examination. However, patients seemed to display significant levels of satisfaction and preferred teaching hospital over non-teaching hospital. Involvement of relatives was seen in very few cases. Questions about patient comfort reflected an overall degree of contentment on communication with medical students. Significant association was observed between students’ seniority and duration of interaction, and between students who took consent for taking history and those who took consent for conducting examination.
Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in India where authors have studied crucial matter of student-patient relationship. Notwithstanding lack of consent and introduction as a medical student, most patients were content with student’s interaction, which may be due to sense of empowerment that patients felt on being part of students’ education, besides being given opportunity to gain better understanding of their health status.
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