Nursing and medical students perception of difficult patient and determine their communication with the difficult patient

This study is carried out for nursing and medical students to make them perceive the concept of difficult patient and to determine their communication with the difficult patient. In this study, the data has been provided from questionnaire and inventory of communication skills aimed at the perception of difficult patient by nursing and medical students and at specification of their communications including the demographical characteristics of the students. The study has been carried out in Antalya School of Nursing and Medical Faculty of Akdeniz University. The universe of the study is constituted by 583 students (Nursing=359, Medicine =224) that study in this university and that have accepted to participate in the research.SPSS-16 statistics package program has been used during the evaluation of the data. Descriptive statistics, comparisons between variables, the tests of chi square, Kruskall-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U and t have been applied in the statistical evaluation,. The avarage of age of nursing students and medical students taking part in the research is 21.6±2.07 and 23.61 ±1.51, respectively. While 78% of the nursing students is composed of girls and 22% of boys, 44.6% of medical students is composed of girls and 55.4% of boys.While the general communication ability of nursing students is 118.27 ±13.29, that of medical students is 117.55 ±10.48. It is seen that students? age, gender, the classes they continue and the clinics they practice in, are each effective variables on their communication abilities.It has been found that students? difficult patient perception and their connection between these patients are related with their communication abilities. It is confirmed that, for both groups of students, ?noncommunicable patients? are difficult patients. It is determined that ?patients with emotional problems who reject treatment and cooperation? and ?patients without a medical history or with insufficient medical history? are difficult patients for nursing and medical students, respectively.It is revealed that students have difficulty in communicating with difficult patients. It is stated that nursing and medical students use emotion focused coping strategies; and also they use problem focused coping strategies for patients to a limited degree to deal with difficult patients. It is revealed that they propose the rearrangement of the communication lessons.Key words: difficult patient, nurse-patient communication, doctor-patient communication, nursing education, medical education