Promoting general practice as a career to medical students; a qualitative study of the approaches of undergraduate GP tutors

ABSTRACT

Background

Undergraduate (UG) General Practice (GP) tutors have been identified in the literature and in key UK workforce planning documents as one of the main influences on medical students’ decisions about pursuing a career in GP.

Aim

To explore the attitudes and educational approaches of UG GP tutors in promoting GP as a career.

Design and Setting

A pragmatic constructivist qualitative study, interviewing 8 UG GP tutors supervising undergraduate final year medical students on placement.

Method

Interviews were transcribed, coded and grouped into themes using NVIVO11. Analysis was descriptive and interpretive using principles of thematic analysis.

Results

Tutors saw their role as promoting GP, supporting informed career decisions, correcting misconceptions and giving honest views. They used tutorials, critical reflection, exposure to authentic GP and role-modelling to promote GP, challenge misconceptions, and showcase managing complexities..

Discussion

By guiding students to identify, discuss and reflect on their beliefs and by using clinical encounters and role modelling with further reflection, tutors enabled students to get a true picture of GP to identify if they could handle the challenges and complexities of the job. Kolb’s experiential learning cycle could form a framework to guide tutors in clinical settings supporting students making informed career decisions.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• General practice
• medical students
• medical education
• decision making
• occupation

Acknowledgments

Professor Jayne Parry for helping devise the methods and reading drafts. Dr Kirsty Shires for giving departmental time and reading drafts. Dr Dawn Jackson for helping with the analysis and proofreading. Dr Alexandra Lee for doing an independent review of the data. All the GPs who gave up their time to be interviewed.

Disclosure Statement

The main author is a senior clinical tutor at The University of Birmingham.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Ethical Approval

Ethical approval was granted by the University of Warwicks Biomedical and Scientific Research Ethics Committee (BSREC) number REGO-2018-MED-012. The University of Birmingham granted ethical approval by proxy. NHS REC approvals were not required which was confirmed by the Medical Research Councils tool kit.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.