STUDY OF PATIENTS’ ACCEPTABILITY AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL STUDENTS IN A TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL OF EASTERN INDIA

Abstract

Background: Patients have always been part of medical education. The patients’ co-operation with the undergraduate medical students is vital in clinical education. Patient contact is an integral component of medical education, training and assessment. It provides students and doctors with an opportunity to learn and to develop their professional skills, attitudes and identity. Patients can also benefit from involvement in teaching and training, by increasing their own knowledge, and indirectly through improved training of the medical workforce. Recent reforms of medical education now use more structured and extensive patient contact. Patients should be actively involved in the development, review and implementation of Medical curriculum. But lack of experience of the large number students may evoke negative attitude and acceptability of patients which may sometimes adversely affect the clinical teaching environment. Lots of studies conducted on this area in the different part of the world with varying results with different cultural patients with socio-demographic variation. In this area there was need of more studies especially at this part of the world, Burdwan Medical College, India, where there was no such study conducted before. Objective: In this study my objective was to explore the attitude & acceptability of the undergraduate medical students by the patients in a tertiary care teaching hospital of eastern India. Methods: This study was conducted among 560 patients in OPD & inpatients in Burdwan Medical College, Burdwan , India, from March 2012- June 2012, using predesigned structured questionnaires. Results: Among 560 patients 545 patients responded. Male patients were 54.678% & female were 45.32%. Hindu patients were 37.064% (n=202) and Muslim patients were 62.935% ( n=343). Higher acceptance of both male& female undergraduate medical students at the rate of 86.972% (n=474) by the patients when there was medical examination with the presence of doctors. Whereas only 30.09% (n=164) acceptance of both male& female students by the patients when there was no doctors. In general there was higher acceptance of both sexes’ students by the patients when there was no direct contact with the patients, e.g. taking history of illness, presenting at the OPD clinic, reading the patients file etc. 69.908% (n=381) of patients felt comfortable with the presence of medical students, while 79.266% (n=432) of patients gave favorable opinion regarding the improvement of the quality of health care with the presence of undergraduate medical students. Conclusion: Though a large number of patients did not accept the students without the presence doctor, but majority of the patients showed overall positive attitude towards the involvement of medical students.  Key Words: Medical Students, Medical Education, Patients’ acceptability, OPD Clinic.