NHS Direct out-of-hours service for general practitioner registrars: trainees' experiences of a learning opportunity

On its introduction in 1997 NHS Direct was intended to take over responsibility for screening all out-of-hours (OOH) calls to GPs, following the successful completion of national pilot projects. This research sought to evaluate the impact of exposure of GPRs to a structured NHS Direct educational experience as a professional development activity. The paper addresses the debate on the content and delivery of GPRs' professional development, and the need to better understand the OOH service as a tool for reflection on personal and professional development. This evaluation confirmed both the value and acceptability of structured experiential programmes of this nature, whilst also identifying key success factors for the design and delivery of future programmes. Furthermore, it makes recommendations for an extension of this pilot study to a national level, and for such programmes to be made available to all GPRs, using more traditional environments.