1) We performed a questionnaire survey of educational effectiveness and student satisfaction in regards to early exposure training programs.
2) The most effective educational training programs were, in descending order, "outpatient escort practice," "nursery practice," and "ward nursing practice." The programs with the highest levels of student satisfaction were, in descending order, "nursery practice," "severely mentally disabled patients' care practice," and "experimental learning practice of wheelchair activity." Because we found a large discrepancy between educational effectiveness and student satisfaction, we searched for factors influencing student satisfaction by analyzing the comments students made about each training program.
3) Factors that significantly affected both student satisfaction and educational effectiveness were "useful experience for future medical practice," "feeling of being able to help others," and "a sense of achievement."

1)This study aimed to investigate how many outpatients gave informed consent for first–year medical students to practice as patient escorts and to examine students' behavior in the escort practice program.
2)The percentage of students who could obtain consent was 81.8%, and the percentage who could not was 18.2%. When students were divided by sex, 24.5% of male students and 10.3% of female students could not obtain consent.
3)When trying to obtain informed consent, 66.3% of students felt uneasy, and 56.3% of students who could not obtain consent felt shock, but 62.6%of them recovered psychologically after obtaining consent from the next patient.

Background: Although community-based training is included in medical undergraduate education in Japan, little assessment of the outcomes of community-based education programs has been performed. The aim of this study was to investigate the outcomes of a community-based education program using a mixed method.
Methods: The study design utilized both qualitative and quantitative methods (mixed method). The subjects (n = 278) were fifth-grade medical students who were involved in the program from 2008 to 2010 inclusive. We collected two types of data: a six-item pre-and-post questionnaire (quantitative) and an open-ended questionnaire (qualitative) to evaluate the impressions this experience left on the students.
Results: Pre-and-post questionnaires were completed by 263 (95%) of 278 subjects; on all items, the scores of the post- data were significantly higher than that of pre- data (P < 0.001). From the responses given by 139 respondents (total 181, 77%) in the open-ended questionnaire survey, 10 themes were extracted: 1. Inter-professional cooperation; 2. Role and cooperation among university hospitals, community hospitals, clinics, and welfare facilities; 3. Patient-centered medicine; 4. Trust-based relationships; 5. Competency in general medicine; 6. Professionalism; 7. Medical management; 8. Communication; 9. Common diseases; and 10. Long-term care.
Conclusions: We found that medical students gained four major perspectives from their experiences: Inter-professional cooperation, trust based relationships, roles of community hospitals and clinics, and patient-centered medicine, respectively. Our findings suggest this program contributed significantly to their understanding of community medicine.