Patients attitude and feeling toward the presence of rehabilitation students in educational clinics

Patients are cornerstone of medical student teaching. Patients´ satisfaction increases their participation and improves the educational process. In this account, the aim of this study was to assess patients´ attitude and feeling toward the presence of rehabilitation students in educational clinics of Semnan University of Medical Sciences.
This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 291 patients who referred to educational rehabilitation clinics of Semnan University of Medical Sciences during 2014-2015. The data was gathered by using a questionnaire with 17 items.
Mean score of patients’ feeling toward presence of medical students was 3.85out of 5 total scores. Overall, 85% of patients were relaxed during history taking, examination and treatment by students. Considerably, there was a significant statistical difference between mean and standard deviation of the patients´ feeling who were informed about presence of students (3.92±0.55) and those who were not informed. (3.60±0.84) (p=0.002).
In general, patients felt comfortable about presence of rehabilitation students during history taking, examination and treatment. Patient Satisfaction will be increased by being aware of student's presence, reducing the number of students and keeping patients ´privacy.