Topics and skills in orthopaedics for the general practitioner.

We conducted a survey to identify topics and skills in orthopaedics that should be included in a curriculum for the education of general practitioners. Forty-one program chairpersons responded to a questionnaire that asked respondents to rate the importance of each of eighty topics or skills related to orthopaedic surgery. The questionnaires were analyzed with use of descriptive statistics. The stability of the results was assessed with a follow-up questionnaire five months after the first survey had been completed, and the results were analyzed with a correlation coefficient of the mean ratings of importance and percentage agreement on individual items. The results produced a rank-order listing of important topics and skills in orthopaedics for the general practitioner. The topics and skills that were rated highly by program chairpersons corresponded to the types of musculoskeletal problems most commonly seen by family practitioners. This survey provides concurrent validity for the rank-order lists and confirms the need to include these items in a core curriculum for general practitioners.