Patients' & students' perspectives on bedside teaching: A descriptive study.

Objective: To assess the student's and patients' perspectives about bedside teaching and to identify possible barriers that delay effective bedside teaching.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at two teaching hospitals in Peshawar with 153 participants through non-probability serial sampling from December 2017 to March 2018. Interview-based validated questionnaires were used and pilot tested as well. Ethical approval was taken with the participant's consent. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 19.0 using descriptive statistics.

Results: Among the total 79 students, all of them completed the questionnaires with a 100% response rate. However, from the 76 patients only 74 responded with a response rate of 97%. The majority of the patients (n=58; 78%) were satisfied with bedside teaching with no problems faced. During the bedside teaching only (n= 13; 18.2%) felt anxious while others, enjoyed (n= 59; 80.5%) with satisfaction and only 13% (n= 10) thought their privacy was breached. The satisfied students with the time spent on bedside teaching were (n= 52; 65.5%) while (n= 30; 38.7%) thought thirty minutes time was not enough. The hurdles faced were lack of practice (37.3%), fear of embarrassment in front of peers (21.3%), and lack of confidence to approach the patient (16%).

Conclusion: The patients showed positive attitude and enjoyed bedside teaching. The students preferred it as a valuable tool for clinical experience. However, time constraints, lack of practice, lack of confidence, confidentiality, and anxiety must be overcome to make bedside teaching a useful method. Effective teaching still requires good teaching methodologies with confidence and competency.