Contents - Middle East Journal of Family Medicine

MEDICINE AND SOCIETYwhose examinations were completed were asked tovoluntarily fill out the questionnaire forms anonymously.Students examined all the patients during their practice.The questionnaire forms consist of 13 questions thatcontain demographic information, education status, andtheir opinions about participation of medical students inthe examination period.Senior medical students do a 4-week family medicinerotation, examining the patients before the responsiblelecturer. First, medical students introduce themselvesto the patient, take the medical history and before theresponsible doctor arrives, they finish the examinationof the patient. Then, students collect all findings, presentthem to the responsible lecturer and finally they end thevisit together by evaluating the patients.Statistical analyses, double frequency charts, comparisonof the distribution of categorized answers were observedwith ki-square. Five pointed Likert scale was used inthe questionnaire form and the highest point was givento the most accepted (1 being strongly disagree, 5 beingstrongly agree). Variation analyses were made to comparethe average of the answers to the demographic variablesand one-way ANNOVA statistics were made to show theharmony in variables. SPSS 9.0 program was used at allanalyses.RESULTSA hundred and eighty five people were included inthis study. Demographic data are presented on Table 1.98.2% of the patients stated that the patient examinationis a necessity, 1.7% of the patients were undecided,only 0.1% of the patients did not answer this question.Opinions of the patients about student participation intheir examinations are summarized in Table 2.92.1% of the patients stated that participation of thestudents in their examination was helpful for them, 5.6%of the patients were undecided, and 2.3% of the patientsresponded that this practice was not useful.84.1% of the patients felt confident about the participationof the students in the examinations, 9.1% of the patientsexpressed that they had no idea, and 6.8% of thepatients expressed that they did not feel confident in theexaminations.76.6% of our patients expressed that they were notdisturbed by the participation of the students, 78.4% ofthe patients expressed that participation of the students tothe examinations did not cause waste of time, and 72.6%of them expressed that this participation did not preventthem from explaining their illnesses; they also expressedthat they could easily explain their illnesses.For the internal reliability of analysed data, CronbachAlpha index was calculated. Cronbach Alpha, which isa reliability coefficient, was found approximately 80.0%(0.7972). At the same time, it can be said that internalconsistency of data is very good because there was notany negative relationship between total correlations andany variables, or total correlation between variables wasnot very low.According to the results of ANOVA, there was ameaningful difference between the answers of young andold patients about the idea of patient examination beingnecessary or unnecessary in medical education. Whenthe ages of the patients increase, response to this subjectbecame more positive (p=.014). Older patients receivedthe highest score (4.857). Middle-aged (30-60) patients(4.796), young (