Medical Student's Perception And Preferences About Peer Physical Examination (PPE)

Manjunath H,Taklikar R H,Venkatesh D,Vijayanath Vijayanath

doi:10.15419/ajhs.v2i1.423

Abstract

There is greater emphasis on clinically oriented teaching and early clinical exposure for medical students. There is limitation to practice and perfect the skills on sick patients. Hence, standardized patients are used for practice of clinical skills. However non-availability of trained standardized patients, high cost of employing them poses a challenge to training medical students. The viable alternative is to use the peers for skill training. It can be a potential area of student discomfort or inappropriate behavior by classmates or tutors. Present study assesses the attitude of students towards Peer Physical Examination (PPE). Fifty three third term medical students (23 males and 30 females) were administered a structured and validated questionnaire with 15 questions to assess elements of comfort, professionalism, appropriateness and value of PPE. Students responded to questions using a five-point Likert scale, where 1 = strongly agree, and 5 = strongly disagree.The pattern of response was similar for male and female students. 81.82% were comfortable with PPE for practice of clinical skills. 32.90% were comfortable examining peers of opposite sex. 18.04% felt it was appropriate to perform breast, genital and rectal examinations on peers. 2.17% agreed to volunteer for such examination.Majority of students preferred PPE to standardized patients for practice of clinical skills. PPE was preferred as it provided valuable feedback, better learning experience, and felt examining classmates was comfortable & appropriate. However they felt inappropriate to volunteer or examine breast, inguinal, genital regions of classmate as a part of PPE.

Highlights

Modern medical education, teaching-learning approaches laid emphasis on students acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to medical practice
The need for Peer physical examination (PPE) in terms of learning clinical skills is based on the fact that there has been an increase in the number of medical students, clinical skills teaching in the pre-clinical years require that students have access to subjects to learn and practice their clinical skills
Non-availability of trained standardized patients, high cost of employing them poses a challenge to training medical students in our country

Summary

Introduction

Modern medical education, teaching-learning approaches laid emphasis on students acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to medical practice. Peer physical examination (PPE) is a method whereby students learn the skills using each other as subject for examination. It is employed in many medical institutions to teach functional anatomy and skills of clinical examination. PPE enables students to become familiar with clinical examination and communication skills before interacting and examining real patients [1]. Students develop empathy for their patients, understanding what it feels like to be examined [4]. It can be a potential area of student discomfort or inappropriate behavior by classmates or tutors and one would

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Conclusion