[Minor surgery in primary care: is continuing education within the team a valid strategy for improving quality?]

To evaluate the impact of continuing education within the team (FCI, in Spanish) on the quality of minor surgery.

Study of level of quality. SETTING. Primary care.

First evaluation: all the lesions referred for biopsy during 1998 (62 samples). Second evaluation: those referred in 1999-2000 (150).

Four explicit criteria regulating procedure and result were designed: C1, sufficient information; C2, correct referral; C3, correct extirpation of lesion; C4, clinical-pathological concordance. Request forms and anatomical-pathological reports were assessed. Evaluation was before and after corrective measures (FCI and organisational changes designed to support FCI). The Kappa index of inter-observer concordance, the Compliance Index and Fisher's Z index were analysed.

62 lesions were included in the first evaluation, with high reliability for C1 and C4, good for C2 and moderate for C3. 150 lesions were included in the second evaluation. The compliance indices showed statistically significant increases from the first to the second evaluation for C1 (38.09% and 50.66%, relative improvement of 19%) and C4 (68.85% and 85.2%, relative improvement of 53%). C2 showed an improvement, but without statistical significance (87.30% and 92.66%). The compliance index for C3 dropped (94.73% and 87.50%). 5.33% of cases in the second evaluation (8 biopsies) were malignant or pre-malignant lesions, compared with 20.96% in the first (P<.05). 100% of these latter showed free resection limits. 77.99% of lesions studied through a biopsy in the second evaluation were nevus, seborrhoeic keratosis or dermatofibroma.

FCI is a valid strategy for improving the quality of programmes of minor surgery in primary care. There was significant improvement in the identification of malignant and pre-malignant pathology, in correct referral and in the clinical-pathological concordance of the lesions.