What factors influence the introduction of a national undergraduate general practice curriculum in the UK?

ABSTRACT

A national undergraduate curriculum for General Practice might address current concerns regarding intellectual challenge and recruitment through articulating disciplinary knowledge and providing teaching guidance. However, there is ambivalence regarding this idea and the reasons appear incompletely understood.

Aims: To better understand ambivalence towards a GP curriculum and to assess the acceptability of a new approach to national curriculum design.

Methods: Questionnaire informed by Kotter’s model of change, distributed to Heads of Teaching (HOTs) at each UK medical school, regarding the acceptability of both conventional and new approaches to the design of national curriculum guidelines.  Qualitative and quantitative data collection with grounded theory-informed analysis of qualitative data.

Results: Support for a conventional, detailed curriculum of clinical conditions is weak but there is strong support for a curriculum outlining general disciplinary principles. Identification with general practice as an independent academic discipline is important in predicting support or otherwise for any type of national curriculum.

Conclusion: The identity of GP as an independent academic discipline emerges as a key issue.  Further research on designing and implementing curricula that use principles rather than detailed outcomes is needed.

KEYWORDS:

• National
• undergraduate
• general practice
• curriculum
• grounded theory

Box 1. Kotter’s eight steps for leading change [34].

Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the Heads of Teaching Group of the Society for Academic Primary Care for their assistance in developing the questionnaire and for their responses.

Disclosure statement

Professor Sir Denis Pereira Gray wrote the first British article on learning outcomes in general practice for medical students.

Professor Alex Harding was involved with writing ‘Teaching general practice. Guiding principles for undergraduate general practice curricula in UK medical schools’ and holds a Sub Dean post in a medical school with responsibility for teaching.

Ethical approval

This study was granted ethics approval by the University of Exeter Research Ethics Committee.

Provenance

Freely submitted; externally peer reviewed.

Additional information

Funding

Not applicable.