Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

The appearance and the way a doctor is dressed has a very influential effect on the physician-patient relationship. Interns and trainees of medicine must follow the principles of professional behavior as they play a crucial role during their education. The aim of this research is to analyze the interns and trainee's point of view towards dress code.
In this study, after preparing a questionnaire and assessing its validity and reliability, it was sent to 337 interns and trainees of universities of medical sciences, at Shariati, Imam Khomaini and Sina hospitals, which are selected by portion method, after ward their viewpoints were analyzed from 5 dimensions.
One hundred and seventy seven students (52.5%) and seventy students (20.8%) got mean score and high score of physical features respectively.. Two hundred and sixteen students (64.1%) and fifty four students (16%) got mean and high score of dress code respectively. One hundred and eighty eight students (55.8%) and seventy five students (22.3%) got mean and high marks in make up respectively. Two hundred and twenty three students (66.2%)were completely in favor of observing personal hygiene while one hundred and fourteen students (33.8%) just agreed with this issue. Finally, in the total physical features and dress code, 210 students (62.3%) got the average mark and 58 students (17.2%) earned high mark. Interns and trainee's viewpoints about the physical features had a significant correlation with age, sex, and educational level (P<0.05).
The results of this study shows that teaching the importance of physical feature and professional dress code is the most important action to boost the level of compliance about appearance by interns and trainees. Compiling the professional dress code can help getting this aim come true.