[Procedures and technical aptitude of primary care physicians: which education?].

OBJECTIVE

To ascertain the educational goals of internal medicine teachers in the domain of clinical skills, the realization of these objectives and their pertinence for the practice of primary care physicians.

METHODS

Questionnaire containing 44 clinical skills sent to the chiefs of the services of internal medicine of public hospitals in French-speaking Switzerland and the 5 Swiss university hospitals. Comparison of these results with an earlier study concerning the practice of clinical skills of the primary care physicians.

RESULTS

The participation was 82%. The educational goals were identical for all the chiefs of internal medicine independently of whether they were university-dependent or not, or in a large or small hospital. 22 of the proposed clinical skills were considered as teaching goals for > or = 70% of the heads of medicine. However, they thought that only 8 of these 22 skills were acquired by the majority of their residents. 8 of these 22 skills were considered to be indispensable for proper functioning of the service. There was a good correlation between the acquired skills and those considered to be indispensable for proper functioning of the service. The medical chiefs considered most of the skills practiced by the primary care physicians were also educational objectives. However, they thought that only 23% of these skills were acquired by their residents. Only half of the skills considered as acquired were practiced by a majority of the primary care physicians.

CONCLUSIONS

Many clinical skills are considered as educational goals by the medical chiefs of hospital services in internal medicine. However, they consider only a third of these goals as acquired by their residents at the end of their residency. There was a good correlation between the skills thought to be acquired and those considered to be indispensable for proper functioning of their service, and a poor correlation between the skills considered as acquired and those practiced by primary care physicians.