Thinking ‘no’ but saying ‘yes’ to student presence in general practice consultations: politeness theory insights

We've all done it.We've all agreed to something when we really wanted to say no.It was no surprise to us, therefore, that 20.8% of patient participants who agreed to have a student present during their consultation in the Price et al. 1 study would have preferred to see their general practitioner (GP) alone.This finding is consistent with results from our qualitative research in which medical students articulated their anxieties about patient consent. 2 Although students were keen for patients to give consent because this would provide the students with learning opportunities, they were worried that patients sometimes gave consent without understanding what they were consenting to and without really wanting to consent.This tension between patient consent and student learning has been articulated in earlier literature 3 and is illustrated in turns 1 and 5 of the