Integrating family medicine residents into a rural practice.

PROBLEM

Integrating residents into community family practices can be challenging for busy doctors, especially when new preceptors have no formal preparation or teaching experience.

OBJECTIVE OF PROGRAM

To develop an organized and practical approach to teaching residents in our busy rural group practice. Our seven northern Ontario family doctors have been training elective residents and clerks for 15 years. Recently, we have gone from hosting elective residents and students to teaching core family medicine residents. Our precepting plan allows us to dedicate a reasonable time to teaching while fulfilling our primary care duties.

MAIN COMPONENTS

The program involves contracting, teaching, monitoring, feedback, and evaluation.

CONCLUSION

We think we have developed a sustainable, workable set of teaching parameters that is applicable by various preceptors in different settings. It has simplified our teaching role and lessened our anxieties. Residents have benefited from the consistent protocol, which can be flexible enough to adapt to individual residents and preceptors, and have valued this teaching approach.