The acquisition of clinical experience during GP training – how can we mitigate for the impact of COVID-19?

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the way general practice is run and this is expected to have had a knock-on effect upon GP training. A questionnaire-based study was designed to investigate what was happening to GP trainees 16 months into the pandemic in terms of opportunities to develop clinical experience and clinical decision-making. We also asked trainers and trainees for ideas on how we might mitigate for the effects of COVID-19. In particular, there has been decreased exposure to clinical examination during the pandemic and there appear to be gaps in opportunities to learn from urgent and unscheduled care settings and to develop skills in rapid clinical decision-making. It is interesting to consider what general practice will look like when the pandemic is over and how this will this affect the GP training curriculum going forwards. Although response rates were low, we were able to determine some emerging themes for national, local and educational review going forwards to help shape and improve GP training for the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Trainees
• clinical experience
• decision-making
• remote consulting
• COVID-19
• primary care

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr Jane MacDougall for advice and guidance with the setting up of this study and Vivienne Shaw, R&D Lead at Cambridge & Peterborough CCG for her input on behalf of the Sponsor.

Consent statement

Regarding consent, an email was sent containing a participant information leaflet (PIL) and a link to the electronic questionnaire to potential study participants. Having read the PIL, if the questionnaire was completed, it was assumed that the respondent has consented to participate. The questionnaire responses were collected anonymously but the final question asked if they would consider being involved in further research and asked if they might leave their email address. Thus, responses would be identifiable and hence there was also an option for them to email the Chief Investigator to indicate their willingness to participate further. That way, their responses would still be anonymous.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2022.2116730

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.