Using video-taped examples of Standardized Patient to teach medical students taking informed consent

Introduction: Medical student should be trained in medical ethics and one of the most essential issues in this field is taking informed consents. In this research, we compared the effect of effectiveness of teaching methods on students’ ability in taking informed consent from patients. Methods: This semi-experimental study was carried out on fifty eight subjects from the 4th-year students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences who attended in medical ethics course before their ‘clinical clerkship’training.Method of sampling was census and students were randomly allocated into two groups of control group (n=28) was trained in traditional lecture-based class and the case groupnamed as A1 (n=22) were taught by video-taped examples of standardized patient.Then A1 group attended in traditional lecture-based classes named as A2. The groups were evaluated in terms the ability of recognition of ethical issues through the scenario based ethical examination before and after each training. Scenarios were related to the topics of informed consent. Data were analyzed by SPSS 14 software using descriptive statistics and anova test. P value less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Results: The mean scores results of A2, A1 and B group were found to be 7.21, 5.91 and 5.73 out of 8, respectively. Comparison between the groups demonstrated that the ability of taking informed consent was significantly higher in A2 group (p < 0.001), followed by A1 group (p < 0.05), while was the least in the B group (p=0.875). Conclusion: According to this research, lecture-based teaching is still of great value in teaching medical ethics, but when combined with standardized patient, the outcome will be much better. It should be considered that mixed methods of teaching should be used together for better result.