Efficacy of Risk Factor Counseling as Perceived by Medical Students

Abstract: Counseling is a mode of educational communication that is bound to play an increasing role in the future delivery of preventive services. The purpose of this study was to examine medical students' perceptions of their self-efficacy in counseling and the relationship of the perceptions to a patient education learning experience and the stage of undergraduate training. Data were obtained through two inventories: first a questionnaire to measure students self-efficacy and attitudes about counseling and health risk reduction, and later a self-assessment of learning outcomes from the patient education experience. Students' perceptions of self-efficacy in counseling were moderate in strength and significantly related to self-assessment of the patient-educator role. Self-efficacy levels varied across the areas of counseling, such as smoking cessation, stress reduction, and nutritional guidance. No differences were found in the distribution of self-efficacy measures between categories of attitudinal approach to counseling identified by content analysis. In addition, there was a strong trend for increasing self-efficacy in the patient-educator role with progressive stages of undergraduate training. The results confirm the usefulness of measuring the development of self-efficacy and reinforce the idea of the importancc of specific educationa/ praclices in fostering improvement of medical students' counseli.ng performance.