Attitudes of Medical Students in Thailand toward Patient-Centered Care: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Objective: To assess the attitudes of medical students toward patient-centered care and explore what the factorsthat influence these attitudes.Material and Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in January 2015. A study population of 619 medicalstudents in their second to sixth academic year in Faculty of Medicine, Prince of Songkla University were invited toanswer the Patient-Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS) which was translated into Thai by back-translation withbilingual test and was used to assess the attitudes toward the doctor-patient relationship. The associations betweenthe PPOS score and the individual characteristics that included gender, academic year, grade point average(GPA), hometown, mean expenditure per month and residence during the study period were examined by using theindependent t-test, one-way ANOVA and multiple linear regression.Results: The total number of respondents was 520 (84.0%). The mean (S.D.) overall PPOS score was 3.8 (0.4).From multiple linear regression analysis, there were three factors that were significantly associated with the PPOSscore: gender, academic year and GPA (p-value<0.050). Hometown, mean expenditure per month and residenceduring the study period were not significantly different.Conclusions: Female medical students, higher academic year and a higher GPA had greater positive attitudes towardpatient-centered care.