Teaching women’s health skills: Confidence, attitudes, and practice patterns of academic generalist physicians

This study assesses the readiness of academic general internists to perform and precept a commonly utilized women's health examination, and procedural and management skills

Confidence of Academic General Internists and Family Physicians to Teach Ambulatory Procedures

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate and compare the readiness of academic general internal medicine physicians and academic family medicine physicians to perform and teach 13 common ambulatory procedures. DESIGN: Mailed survey. SETTING: Internal medicine and family medicine residency training programs associated with 35 medical schools in 9 eastern states. PARTICIPANTS: Convenience sample of full-time teaching faculty. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A total of 331 general internists and 271 family physicians returned completed questionnaires, with response rates of 57% and 65%, respectively. Academic generalists ranked most of the ambulatory procedures as important for primary care physicians to perform; however, they infrequently performed or taught many of the procedures. Overall, compared with family physicians, general internists performed and taught fewer procedures, received less training, and were less confident in their ability to teach these procedures. Physicians' confidence to teach a procedure was strongly associated with training to perform the procedure and performing or precepting a procedure at least 10 times per year. CONCLUSIONS: Many academic general internists do not perform or precept common adult ambulatory procedures. To ensure that residents have the opportunity to learn routine ambulatory procedures, training programs may need to recruit qualified faculty, train current faculty, or arrange for academic specialists or community physicians to teach these skills

Patient Preferences for Care by General Internists and Specialists in the Ambulatory Setting

OBJECTIVE: To investigate patients' preferences for care by general internists and specialists for common medical conditions. DESIGN: Telephone interview. SETTING: A convenience sample of general internal medicine practices at 10 eastern academic medical centers. PATIENT/PARTICIPANTS: A probability sample of 314 participants who had at least one visit with their primary care physician during the preceding 2 years. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Items addressed patients' attitudes concerning continuity of care, preferences for care by general internists or specialists for common medical problems, and perceptions about the competency of general internists and specialists to manage these problems. Continuity was important to participants, with 63% reporting they preferred having one doctor. Respondents were willing to wait 3 or 4 days to see their regular doctor (85%) and wanted their doctor to see them in the emergency department (77%) and monitor their care while in the hospital (94%). A majority (>60%) preferred care from their regular doctor for a variety of new conditions. Though respondents valued continuity, 84% felt it was important to be able to seek medical care from any type of physician without a referral, and 74% responded that if they needed to see a specialist, they were willing to pay out-of-pocket to do so. Although most participants (98%) thought their regular doctor was able to take care of usual medical problems, the majority thought that specialists were better able to care for allergies (79%) and better able to prescribe medications for depression (65%) and low-back pain (72%). CONCLUSIONS: Participants preferred to see their general internist despite their perceptions that specialists were more competent in caring for the conditions we examined. However, they wanted unrestricted access to specialists to supplement care provided by general internists

Confidence of Graduating Internal Medicine Residents to Perform Ambulatory Procedures

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the training of graduating internal medicine residents to perform 13 common ambulatory procedures, 3 inpatient procedures, and 3 screening examinations. DESIGN: Self-administered descriptive survey. SETTING: Internal medicine training programs associated with 9 medical schools in the eastern United States. PARTICIPANTS: Graduating residents (N = 128); response rate, 60%. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The total number of procedures performed during residency, importance for primary care physicians to perform these procedures, confidence to perform these procedures, and helpfulness of rotations for learning procedures were assessed. The majority of residents performed only 2 of 13 outpatient procedures 10 or more times during residency: simple spirometry and minor wound suturing. For all other procedures, the median number performed was 5 or fewer. The percentage of residents attributing high importance to a procedure was significantly greater than the percentage reporting high confidence for 8 of 13 ambulatory procedures; for all inpatient procedures, residents reported significantly higher confidence than importance. Continuity clinic and block ambulatory rotations were not considered helpful for learning ambulatory procedures. CONCLUSIONS: Though residents in this sample considered most ambulatory procedures important for primary care physicians, they performed them infrequently, if at all, during residency and did not consider their continuity clinic experience helpful for learning these skills. Training programs need to address this deficiency by modifying the curriculum to ensure that these skills are taught to residents who anticipate a career in primary care medicine