Teaching consultation skills: a survey of general practice trainers

Consultation skills are vitally important in general practice (GP), and now form part of the summative assessment of GP registrars in the UK. GP trainers need to be skilled in teaching consultation skills, and also need the time and resources to ensure that their registrars are competent in consultation skills.

To describe the teaching methods used by GP trainers in one deanery, the frequency of teaching of consultation skills, the problems encountered and the training that GP trainers have themselves received both in consultation skills and how to teach them.

Postal questionnaire survey of all the 164 trainers in the Yorkshire Deanery.

Replies were received from 129 trainers (response rate 79%) of which 123 could be analysed. Of these trainers, 45 (37%) trainers taught consultation skills fewer than five times a year, 45 (37%) five to 10 times, and 14 (11%) more than 10 times a year. A total of 24 trainers reported problems with teaching consultation skills, most commonly lack of time, technical difficulties, and unreceptive registrars, and 97 (79%) trainers had had some postgraduate training in consultation skills with 112 (91%) reporting some form of teacher training.

There is considerable variation in the reported frequency of teaching consultation skills, the models used, and the preparation of trainers for teaching, despite a systematic approach to teacher training in the Yorkshire Deanery.