Re-licensing of general practitioners using the current UK revalidation proposals: a cross sectional study

Objective To explore the views of general practitioners (GPs) on the feasibility of collecting supporting information for the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) revalidation portfolio and mapping of this evidence to the General Medical Practice framework for proposed UK medical re-licensing. Design Cross sectional study with a questionnaire. Setting One inner city and one mixed urban/rural primary care organisation in the West Midlands, England and one rural primary care organisation in Wales. Participants 51/69 GPs who submitted a revalidation portfolio from November 2009 to February 2010. Results The majority of GPs considered the majority of work based supporting information was feasible tocollect within a 5 year revalidation cycle; most concerns were expressed about providing evidence for extended practice, learning credits, and patient satisfaction and colleague feedback surveys (59%, 63%, 72%, and 77%, respectively, of GPs considered it feasible to collect this evidence) due to workload time constraints and lack of automatic access to evidence from others, which differed by GP work role. Two-thirds of participants (65%) stated that the submission of a portfolio of evidence was a feasible component of GP revalidation, reporting reservations on the appropriateness of patient and colleague feedback surveys and extended practice (55%, 57%, and 59% respectively) to provide objective evidence. GPs requested further clarity on the evidence mapping process. Conclusion Overall, GPs reported a positive response to the RCGP revalidation proposals. Concerns were focused on collecting the newer types of supporting information and the ability of GPs non-principals to collect this evidence. GP revalidation training and preparation is required

The one minute mentor: a pilot study assessing medical students' and residents' professional behaviours through recordings of clinical preceptors' immediate feedback

Introduction: The assessment of professional development and behaviour is an important issue in the training of medical students and physicians. Several methods have been developed for doing so. What is still needed is a method that combines assessment of actual behaviour in the workplace with timely feedback to learners.\ud Goal: We describe the development, piloting and evaluation of a method for assessing professional behaviour using digital audio recordings of clinical supervisors’ brief feedback. We evaluate the inter-rater reliability, acceptability and feasibility of this approach.\ud Methods: Six medical students in Year 5 and three GP registrars (residents) took part in this pilot project. Each had a personal digital assistant (PDA) and approached their clinical supervisors to give approximately one minute of verbal feedback on professionalism-related behaviours they had observed in the registrar’s clinical encounters. The comments, both in transcribed text format and audio, were scored by five evaluators for competence (the learner’s performance) and confidence (how confident the evaluator was that the comment clearly described an observed behaviour or attribute that was relevant). Students and evaluators were surveyed for feedback on the process.\ud Results: Study evaluators rated 29 comments from supervisors in text and audio format. There was good inter-rater reliability (Cronbach α around 0.8) on competence scores. There was good agreement (paired t-test) between scores across supervisors for assessments of comments in both written and audio formats. Students found the method helpful in providing feedback on professionalism. Evaluators liked having a relatively objective approach for judging behaviours and attributes but found scoring audio comments to be time-consuming.\ud Discussion: This method of assessing learners’ professional behaviour shows potential for providing both formative and summative assessment in a way that is feasible and acceptable to students and evaluators. Initial data shows good reliability but to be valid, training of clinical supervisors is necessary to help them provide useful comments based on defined behaviours and attributes of students. In addition, the validity of the scoring method remains to be confirmed