[First experiences in evaluating the clinical competence of family doctors in Catalonia].

OBJECTIVES

To construct a valid instrument to evaluate the clinical competence of family doctors and establish professional standards.

DESIGN

Construction of an objective and structured clinical evaluation test by the Test Committee of the Catalan Society of Family and Community Medicine (SCMFiC) with 27 representative clinical situations of primary care practice. This used various evaluative instruments and lasted 5 hours and 30 minutes.

SETTING

2 Barcelona health districts for the two runnings of the test.

PARTICIPANTS

Family doctors, SCMFiC members, who took part voluntarily after having been invited by letter.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

23 doctors took part in the first running of the test. Their average age was 36.6 (SD 6.9) and 52.2% of them were women. 46 doctors took part in the second test. Their average age was 30.9 (SD 2.1) and 76.1 were women. The test had an overall reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) of 0.83 the first time and 0.65 the second time. The overall mean score of the participants the first time was 56.9 (SD 19.2), with 100 the top score possible, and 62.1 (SD 4.1) the second time.

CONCLUSIONS

This SCMFiC experiment is the first time the clinical competence of family doctors has been assessed in our area. It was a reliable and valid test to assess the competence of our health professionals.