Patient Satisfaction with Medical Student Participation in a Family Practice Clinic

Medical visits frequently include medical students, transforming the role of the patient into a medical educator as well as a person seeking care. Ensuring patient satisfaction with this arrangement is important for maintaining student access to clinical training. This study was conducted in an academic family medicine center where third-year medical students participate directly in outpatient visits. Two hundred twenty-two patients completed a nine-item survey assessing their satisfaction with their medical visits. Satisfaction ratings were compared between those patients that were seen by a medical student prior to seeing their physician and those patients who saw only their physician. Patients who saw both a medical student and their physician reported a higher rate of prolonged visits. There were no significant differences between the groups regarding satisfaction with wait time, satisfaction with time spent with their physician, addressing their medical concerns, or global satisfaction with their visits.