A Quantitative assessment of a 4-year intervention that improved patient counseling through improving medical student health.

OBJECTIVE: Despite efforts to produce healthier physicians and patients, there are no published experiments where health promotion interventions throughout medical school have been compared with a control group regarding the school environment, students' personal health practices, and students' patient counseling practices.
DESIGN: Using the Class of 2002 as controls, we performed a 4-year pilot study of a personal health promotion intervention on the Class of 2003 at Emory University School of Medicine (EUSM). We focused on improving the actual and perceived healthfulness of the educational milieu, and on improving their personal and clinical practices about diet, tobacco, exercise, and alcohol use. Data were collected at freshman and ward orientations and during a senior rotation (n(controls) = 110, 109, 100 and n(treatment) = 114, 104, 106; all response rates greater than 90%).
RESULTS: Students receiving the intervention perceived EUSM as a healthier environment than did control students. By senior year, control males reported twice the tobacco use reported by males in the intervention (43% vs 22%, P = .02), although they had previously reported very similar levels (31% vs 29%, P = .8). Diet, exercise, and tobacco counseling practices were positively related to the intervention; alcohol was inversely related to the intervention.
CONCLUSIONS: In this pilot, compared with controls, the intervention positively affected medical students' perceptions of their school health promotion environment, reduced tobacco use among male students and, to some extent, improved their patient counseling practices. Such a medical school-based health promotion intervention shows promise and should be studied in a broader setting.