What do family medicine trainees say about their training?

Abstract

Objective: To survey the vocational trainees' evaluation of their training. Design: Questionnaire survey with quantitative and qualitative components. Setting: All trainees, past and present, registered with the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians up to April 2002. Main outcome measure: Quantitative analysis on trainees' agreement/disagreement on specific items of their training, and qualitative analysis of themes extracted from all the responses to open-ended questions. Results: 247 out of 355 present and past trainees responded. Overall, the trainees found the training useful and they learnt the knowledge and skill of family medicine. The Basic Hospital Trainees were more likely to have dissatisfaction than the other trainees; they perceived low esteem, were engaged more in service than in training, and were uncertain about what they were expected to learn. The Basic Community Trainees had diverse and balanced opinions on their training and were more concerned with the variable quality of supervision. The Higher Trainees would like to have a more structured and organised training program than the present one. The trainees suggested that the College of Family Physicians could do more to assure quality of training and to facilitate more communication among the trainers, trainees and the College. Conclusion: The trainees have given a lot of useful and constructive information about their training.