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At teaching hospitals, universal consent for care is often interpreted to imply consent for care by medical trainees. Researchers evaluated patients’ understanding of the definitions for the different types of medical trainees and whether learning about the training hierarchy affects their willingness to be treated by trainees.
In a survey of a convenience sample of 199 English-speaking adult patients at a single academic emergency department in the U.S., 45% of patients initially knew the meaning of “medical student,” and 35% knew the meaning of “intern” and “resident.” After patients were given the definitions of these terms, the proportions who responded that they were unwilling to be cared for by a trainee increased from 8% to 13% for in…