Evaluating patients' satisfaction with medical students' interviewing skills.

Two studies are reported which examine the use and credibility of patients' reports of medical students' clinical interviewing skills. In the first study patients' high satisfaction via a standard rating form tended to match clinicians' assessment of second-year students' history-taking and physical examination skills. A second study used pre-defined 'ideal' and 'not-ideal' bedside roles by a small group of fourth-year students to examine how perceptive or tolerant hospital inpatients are about clinical interviews, whether this effect is sex-linked, and consequently how useful direct and indirect information obtained from patients is in training medical students' interviewing skills.