Informed consent: the use of inpatients as teaching-patients for sophomore medical students

The preservation of patient's rights is an important issue in medical education that has not been addressed adequately in relation to informed consent for the teaching of history and physical examination skills to beginning medical students who are not yet functioning as a part of the health care team. In an attempt to assure informed consent and basic patients' rights and to instruct patient volunteers about the teaching-patient role and its importance to effective medical education, the authors developed a nonphysician patient-advocate-interviewer (PAI) model. The usefulness of the model was evaluated by comparing the perceptions of two groups of volunteer patients and the students for whom they served as teaching patients. Members of volunteer patient group I had a PAI, while group II volunteers were selected and interviewed only by a medical resident. Group I patients were significantly better informed about the teaching-patient's role for which they were volunteering and its importance to medical education and were more comfortable in their student history and physical examination session than were group II patients.