Does a home-based interview with a chronically ill patient help medical students become more patient-centred? A randomised controlled trial.

Harris, Michael; Camenzind, Anna-Lea; Fankhauser, Rita; Streit, Sven; Hari, Roman (2020). Does a home-based interview with a chronically ill patient help medical students become more patient-centred? A randomised controlled trial. BMC medical education, 20(1), p. 217. BioMed Central 10.1186/s12909-020-02136-y

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BACKGROUND

While patient-centred care improves patient outcomes, studies have shown that medical students become less patient-centred with time, so it is crucial to devise interventions that prevent this. We sought to determine whether first-year medical students who had a structured home-based interview with a chronically ill patient became more patient-centred than those who had a sham intervention.

METHODS

This randomised controlled trial assigned first-year students from the University of Bern, Switzerland, to either an interview with a chronically ill patient at the patient's home or to a sham comparator. We used the PPOS-D12 questionnaire to measure students' levels of patient-centredness at baseline, and changes in these levels during their longitudinal primary care clerkship.

RESULTS

A total of 317 students participated. Patient-centred attitudes increased during the study. A home-based interview with a chronically ill patient had no additional effect. Being female and having been exposed to patients before medical school were associated with being more patient-centred at baseline. Students were less patient-centred than their General Practitioner teachers.

CONCLUSIONS

A structured, home-based interview with a chronically ill patient did not change students' patient-centred attitudes, so cannot be recommended as a way to influence those attitudes. However, patient-centred attitudes increased during the students' first year of study, possibly because of their longitudinal primary care clerkship.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

Clinicaltrials.gov reference: NCT03722810 , registered 29th October 2018.

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