Abstract

Kalpana Basyal and Dipa Sigdel*

ABSTRACT

Patients are essential for the acquisition and development of medical students’ clinical skills thus, cooperation and positive attitude of patient towards medical students is very crucial. Therefore, this study was aimed to identify patients’ attitude towards medical students at a Teaching Hospital, Bharatpur. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 119 patients admitted in the Tropical, Surgical, Gynecology/ Obstetrics and Orthopedic wards of Chitwan Medical College Teaching Hospital, Bharatpur. Non-probability purposive sampling technique was adopted to select patient. Data was collected by using semi-structured interview schedule from 27/08/2017 to 09/09/2017 and then collected data was analyzed and interpreted by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Result of this study showed that majority of the respondents belongs to age group 19-39 years (54.6%) with mean age of the respondents 40.7 ± 17.79 and female (54.6%). The total mean score of attitude towards medical students of respondents is 3.38 ± 0.34. More than half of respondents (52.1%) had positive attitude however negative attitude had found in the area of communication skills of medical students with mean score of 3.04 ± 0.21. The significant variable for the respondents’ attitude towards medical students was admitted wards (p= 0.03). It is concluded that even though more than half of the patients’ attitude towards medical students is positive, the hospital needs to plan and implement various programs to maximize positive patient- medical student relationship emphasizing on the area of communication skills.