Clinical psychiatry The attitudes of patients toward the presence of students in psychiatry outpatient clinical practice

Objective: Observation of doctor-patient relationship by students is quite important in medical training. But patients’ awareness about their rights effects their attitude about medical students attendance to their examination. In this research we aim to assess patients reaction about attendance of medical students to their examination.

Methods: The participants were enrolled in the study after giving informed consent who applied to outpatient psychiatry clinics and whom was between 16-60 years old. After filling a sociodemographic inquiry the patients were asked to fulfill an inquiry, which was consisted of 11 questions that was prepared by our team.

Results: The data belonging to 473 patients were obtained. The mean age of the participants was 33.00±11.90 (male 31.58±11.56 and female 33.70±11.98, p=0.047). The 45.7% of participants preferred “doctors wearing with white coat” while 42.7% of participants indicated that it is not important whatever the doctors dressed and 9.7 percent of participant preferred their doctors dressed with daily clothes (jeans and t-shirt). The 29.6% of participants indicated that they allow to be mentally examined by medical students if they are under supervision of clinician while 46.1 of them do not. The 44.5% of participants agreed that the presence of medical students in mental examination might let the clinician “act fastidious to obey their professional rules” while 22% of them disagreed. The 48.2% of participants answered “I could not tell myself enough” and 27.9% of them answered ‘’ my privacy what I will tell’’ to the proposal of “in what reasons do you think the presence of medical students should inşuence your interview?”

Conclusion: Finally this research is important because it is the first research that investigates what psychiatric patients think about attendance of medical students to their interview. A significant proportion of patients give importance to the presence of medical students and wish to contribute to the education. However, this willingness was comparable to the willingness of patients in general surgery or obstetrics and gynecology.