Abstract
Abstract We studied the educational benefits of having students implement informed consent on their own in patient escort training.
In fiscal 2015, faculty advisors handled requests for cooperation and informed consent before conducting patient escort training in our university hospital. In fiscal 2016, the students handled these tasks themselves. We surveyed patients and students in both years.
Response rates for surveys of patients were 67.7% in fiscal 2015 and 81.3% in fiscal 2016, a statistically significant difference. In both surveys of patients and surveys of students, evaluations of items such as student attitudes and consideration for privacy were higher in fiscal 2016. These differences in evaluations were also statistically significant.
The improvements in response rates may have been due to the social reward that the patients received when the students implemented the informed consent procedures themselves in a polite way. Additionally, evaluations of both patients and students may have improved because the students assumed responsibility for their own explanations of informed consent and kept an attentive attitude in later interactions with patients and their own behavior.
By encouraging an awareness among students of their status as dental students, these findings suggest that having students handle informed consent procedures with patients in patient escort training benefits both patients and students.
