Perceptions and Implementations of Best Practices in Patient Education among Second-Year Medical Students

Abstract

Background Effective patient education can help achieve better clinical outcomes. A patient who is active and engaged in their care can better manage their condition at home, especially when monitoring a chronic illness. Meaningful patient education is an important skill in the professional formation of physicians, yet little is known about medical students’ perceptions and implementations of best strategies for effective patient education. Methods All second-year Wayne State University School of Medicine students (n = 298) were invited to complete an online survey regarding their opinion on the most important strategies for successful patient education. The survey asked participants to rank the following strategies from most (1) to least (8) effective: providing written patient education materials in numerous languages, patient teach-back, provider empathy, patient motivation, education follow-up, patient health literacy levels, social determinants of health barriers, and other. Students then completed a patient education module, which involved groups of 5-6 students creating a visual education tool for a specific chronic illness and target patient population. Groups first attended a faculty presentation on their chosen chronic illness, then wrote an abstract and designed a final product under the guidance of a senior medical student or physician mentor. After this module, all second-year students were invited to complete a post-survey regarding the patient education strategies they felt accurately characterized their project. 111 students completed the pre-survey, and 67 students completed the post-survey. Results Before completing the module, students ranked patient teach-back (mean score of 3.07), provider empathy (3.11), and patient motivation (3.49) as the top strategies for effective patient education. After the module, students identified social determinants of health barriers (mean score of 3.36), patient health literacy levels (3.54), and patient motivation (3.55) as the three strategies that best characterized their chronic illness project. Conclusion In a course assignment, undergraduate medical students utilized different patient education strategies from those they initially identified as most effective, indicating a dissociation between their mental framework and application of practices in patient education. These results reveal the need for more comprehensive pre-clinical medical education in implementing effective patient education strategies.