Premium
Group training of general practitioners: evaluation based on participants' expectations of an educational programme
Author(s) -
HOFTVEDT B. O.,
WESTIN S.,
HOLM H. A.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
medical education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1365-2923
pISSN - 0308-0110
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2923.1988.tb00781.x
Subject(s) - norwegian , medical education , comprehension , general practice , psychology , scale (ratio) , family medicine , duration (music) , medicine , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language , art , literature
Summary. Since 1985, the Norwegian Medical Association (NMA) has offered a 5‐year specialist training programme in general practice. For two of these years the doctors take part in a group‐based educational programme with bi‐weekly meetings of 3 hours' duration. The evaluation study reported here had a dual purpose: to provide the groups with a method for exploring the group members' expectations of the programme, and to measure to what extent the programme had actually met these expectations within the first of the z years. Thirty‐one of 38 groups, first established in spring 1986, responded on a postal inquiry where they were asked to list up to 10 features they expected to find in the educational programme. These expectations were rated by the groups on a five‐point scale, where 5 denoted a fully met expectation. The four most frequent features analysed were: (I) increased comprehension of the characteristics and practice of general medicine; (2) good group collaboration; (3) facilitating the acquisition of medical knowledge; and (4) evaluation of clinical problems and patient management. Expectations for the first two of these features were nearly fully met, while the two others were met to a lesser degree. This type of evaluation seemed to be a useful tool for improving the group's way of functioning.