Satisfaction of patients with medical student's clinical skills.

A patient satisfaction-dissatisfaction rating scale was developed to measure patients' perceptions of the attitudes and communication skills of medical students. An 11-item questionnaire was completed by trained patients following an end-of-year clinical assessment of the first- and third-year students of a five-year training program. The patients rated 80 percent of the first-year students and 90 percent of the third-year students as acceptable as future doctors. The patients showed a statistically significant preference for the third-year students (p less than 0.05). To assess the reliability over time of patient reactions, two consecutive third-year student groups were compared, and no significant differences in patient satisfaction-dissatisfaction were apparent. The patients tended to perceive female students as more satisfactory than male students. A weak positive correlation between faculty assessments of students and those of the patients was observed. These results suggest that patients are capable of detecting small general improvements in students' attitudes and general manner across years of training and that the patients' ratings are reliable over time.