16 Clinicians, who feel increasing pressures to maximize their productivity, often fear that teaching will interfere with their own efficiency or decrease the time they can spend with each patient. However, in the second study of 4 experienced preceptors, the patients lost an average of only 24 seconds with the physician while receiving an additional 12.9 minutes from the student. 16 Health systems are similarly fearful that having students in the practice will decrease patient satisfaction. In fact, most patients are agreeable to seeing medical students and value the opportunity to interact with them. By participating in faculty development programs, it is possible to learn time-efficient methods to interact with students, which may actually improve patient satisfaction.
Students can improve the quality of care provided to patients and save the physician time.
Possible student activities include developing a list of community resources for specific patient needs, developing patient education materials, performing direct patient education, performing literature searches on focused clinical questions, participating in quality assurance processes, and performing chart reviews, such as of medication lists, laboratory test results, or ancillary services reports. Such activities are rewarding, however, only if they are perceived by both the student and the preceptor as important to the care of patients. Each preceptor or clinic may provide unique opportunities for students to become important members of a health care team. Finally, several medical schools have placed students with community-based ancillary health agencies to allow students to understand the role of these agencies in the delivery of health care. These experiences have been beneficial for the students, the agencies, and their clients.