Do medical students correctly perceive what patients believe about their own health?

Objective: This study set out to estimate the prevalence of any mismatch between medical students' perceptions of patients' health beliefs and those of a normative group of primary care patients.

Methods: A Perception of Health Scale, normed on 314 primary care patients and including four reproducible subscales based on Health Belief Model constructs, was distributed to 500 medical students in Years 3 and 4 at a private US medical school. The students were asked to indicate how a 'typical' patient they had seen with a preceptor or on a rotation might have answered. Responses were scored as matching or not matching the normative data. Group comparisons were made for gender, year of graduation, age and planned specialty.

Results: Depending on the subscale, at least 75% of the students' responses did not match those of the normative patient group. There were no consistent group differences.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that medical students do not accurately perceive what patients believe about their own health. Whether this is true for residents and providers in practice remains unknown.