Medical Students' Perception towards Doctor‐Patient Relationship: A Cross‐Sectional Study at AlFaisal University

Abstract

IntroductionStrengthening the relationship between a doctor and a patient is an essential element for a advancing a healthcare system. As previous studies have ubiquitously demonstrated this phenomenon, studying the perception of medical students towards this relationship in one of the developing countries is highly important. The perception is measured by Patient ‐ Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS) which contains both caring items, assessing how much care provided to your patients and sharing items, which reflect the amount of information shared with patients. As PPOS score increases, the practice becomes more towards patient – centeredness and hence, more coherence in doctor‐patient relationship.MethodA total of 132 third year medical students at Alfaisal University were enrolled in this cross sectional study. The quantitative questionnaire was carried out using Patient‐ Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS). The overall scores of patient caring and sharing were calculated and the statistical difference was assessed using the independent samples t‐test. The effect of various factors including gender and academic level (measured by GPA) was measured using independent samples t‐test and one‐way multiple variance of analysis (ANOVA), respectively. The linear regression model was also utilized to determine whether these factors predict the caring, sharing and the overall PPOS scores.ResultsThe mean scores of caring, sharing and overall PPOS were 4.21, 3.98 and 4.10, respectively. Students have demonstrated higher scoring in caring items compared to sharing ones (P<0.01). Male students have scored more in sharing components compared to their female peers (4.20 vs. 3.81, P<0.01). In addition, students with good GPA rated higher in caring items than those with average GPA (P<0.05). None of the factors have really predicted the caring, sharing and overall PPOS scores.ConclusionOur findings suggest that our students' perception towards patient‐centeredness was lower than previous studies and more education along with practice are required to improve this attitude. Moreover, students had lower perception towards the importance of sharing adequate information with the patient, an attitude that needs to be further rectified in order to enhance the advancement of healthcare system in Saudi Arabia.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.