title: Junior medical students and satisfaction of patients' parents in a pediatric clerkship.
abstract: This study reports an evaluation of the impact of junior medical students on patient satisfaction, as expressed by the patients' parents, and on visit length in a hospital-based general pediatric clinic. Data were collected on a group of consecutive visits. One month later a random sample of the parents of these patients were interviewed to ascertain their attitudes toward the care of their children. Data gathered by these two methodologies were combined to yield an operational and attitudinal data set. Although patient visits with medical students were significantly longer than nonstudent encounters, the proportion of parents who expressed overall satisfaction with their child's visit was greater for visits involving medical students. Dissatisfaction with the amount of time spent generally increased with the length of the visit in both groups. A pattern emerged, however, which indicated that a larger proportion of parents whose children were involved in teaching encounters were satisfied with the visit overall than those not involved regardless of the visit length. The data suggest willingness on the part of parents to accept time costs associated with teaching in the program.
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D006801:Humans; D010290:Parents; D010372:Pediatrics / Q000193:education*; D013337:Students, Medical