Comparison of Patient-Physician Interaction (PPI) Evaluation between Different Grade Medical Students

A proper patient-physician interaction (PPI) creates rapport between doctors and patients and improves medical outcomes. The importance of PPI evaluation items was evaluated in each medical student in grades 3 and 4, before and after their clinical clerkship.

Six PPI evaluation guidelines (SEGUE, Kalamazoo Consensus, Calgary-Cambridge Guide, Macy guideline, 2 Korean Consortium guidelines) were selected and importance of each guideline was evaluated through the structured questionnaire in 73 pre-clinical clerkship (3rd-grade) and 78 post-clinical clerkship (4th-grade) medical students.

The importance of medical communication items among total clinical performance, students-rated PPI portion was 21+/-9.7%. In SEGUE recommendations, 'Elicit information' was evaluated to be most important items before (58.3%) and after (65.8%) clinical clerkship. In Kalamazoo Consensus, 'Gathering information' was evaluated to be most important (49.3%/42.3%), same as in Calgary-Cambridge Guide (52.1%/56.4%) and Daegu Gyeongbuk Consortium (47.9%/43.6%). In the Macy guideline, 'Listening' was evaluated to be most important (28.8%/33.3%). In the Seoul Gyeonggi Consortium, 'Buidling relationships' was evaluated to be most important (23.3%/28.2%).

In the 4th-grade post-clerkship medical students after clinical clerkship, importance of 'Gathering information' was evaluated to be less important, however, 'Giving information' and 'Understanding the patient perspective' was evaluated to be more important, compared to pre-clerkship students 3rd-grade students.