Abstract
Purpose: :
To assess the perceptions of the parents of pediatric strabismus patients with regards to resident training, resident participation in medical care, and resident participation in strabismus surgical care.
Methods: :
Data were collected from a voluntary and completely anonymous 13-question combination multiple choice survey from 100 adult parents of pediatric strabismus patients at the Loyola University Health Systems Pediatric Ophthalmology clinic. Survey topics included: the definition of a resident physician, issues surrounding the informed consent procedure, resident participation in medical and surgical ophthalmic care, role of a teaching hospital, comfort with resident patient care, and the impact on patient care quality made by resident physicians.
Results: :
Only 54% of surveyed parents selected the most accurate definition of a resident physician. Fifty-three percent prefer informed consent to be obtained by their child’s attending physician. The majority (70%) felt that using the term "assist" as a way to describe resident involvement in a surgical procedure indicated that the resident would be performing parts of their child’s surgery, but not the entire procedure. Only 37% of parents reported being comfortable having resident physicians perform a portion of their child’s surgical procedure; while a significant minority (5%) were comfortable having residents perform their child’s entire surgical procedure. Fifty-two percent of parents would prefer to be given the option to choose whether their child be subjected to a resident examination prior to the attending physician; while a large majority (91%) agreed that residents should be involved in the general care and surgical care (71%) specifically, of all pediatric ophthalmology patients at a teaching hospital. Most (75%) parents felt there was no difference in patient care and that their child received the same amount of attention from their attending physician (75%) when residents were involved in their care.
Conclusions: :
Our study indicates highly varied opinions amongst pediatric parents regarding the involvement of ophthalmic resident physicians in their child’s care. In order to establish better training and teaching practices, we must thoroughly understand the entire teaching environment, which includes the attitudes and perspectives of the patients and parents within a training institution.
Keywords: strabismus • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: systems/equipment/techniques