Precepting Medical Students in the Patient's Presence: An Educational Randomized Trial in Family Medicine Clinic

Many medical student-patient encounters occur in the outpatient setting. Conference room staffing (CRS) of student presentations has been the norm in the United States in recent decades. However, this method may not be suitable for outpatient precepting, being inefficient and reducing valuable direct face time between physician and patient. Precepting in the Presence of the Patient (PIPP) has previously been found to be an effective educational model in the outpatient setting but has never been studied in family medicine clinics, nor with non-English speaking patients, nor patients from lower socioeconomic backgrounds with low literacy.

We used a randomized controlled trial of educational models comparing time spent using PIPP with CRS in two family medicine clinics. Patient, student, and physician satisfaction were also measured using a 5-point Likert scale; total encounter time and time spent precepting were also recorded.

PIPP is strongly preferred by attending physicians while patients and students were equally satisfied with either precepting method. PIPP provides an additional 3 minutes of physician-patient face time (17.39 versus 14.08 minutes) in an encounter that is overall shortened by 2 minutes (17.39 versus 19.71 minutes).

PIPP is an effective method for precepting medical students in family medicine clinics, even with non-English speaking patients and those with low literacy. Given the time constraints of family physicians, PIPP should be considered as a preferred, time-efficient method for training medical students that is well received by patients, students, and particularly by physicians.