Academic departments of general practice in Ontario and Scotland.

The departments of family medicine in Ontario are compared with departments of general practice in Scotland. The former are mainly involved with postgraduate training and are much larger than the Scottish departments which are primarily concerned with undergraduate teaching. Because of the difference in numbers the full time staff in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University were compared with those in all four Departments of General Practice in Scotland. A self-completed questionnaire was used to find out where the full-time academic staff had come from; what they were doing at present; and where they saw academic family medicine going in the future. The results are discussed in the context of health care provision and medical education in Canada and the United Kingdom.