Residents' expectation of family medicine-specific training program and its current state

The family medicine residency program consists mainly of clinical rotations in other specialties and the family medicine-specific training. We conducted this study to investigate how family medicine residents evaluated their training program that include family-oriented medicine, clinical preventive medicine, behavioral science and research in primary care.

In 2009, third-year residents of 129 training hospitals in Korea were surveyed to investigate the current state and their expectation of the residency program. The contents of questionnaires included training periods, conferences, procedures, interview techniques, outpatient and inpatient consultations, and written thesis.

Total 133 out of 142 residents (93.7%) responded that 3 years of training is ideal or pertinent. Residents responded that the types of conference that they need most are journal review (81%), staff lecture (73.2%), and clinical topic review (73.2%), in that order. Procedures and interview techniques that the residents want to learn most were gastroscopy (72.5%), abdominal ultrasonography (65.2%), and pain management (46.4%). Hospitals where family medicine residents do not see hospitalized patients or patients in the outpatient clinic were 7.9% and 6.5%, respectively, whereas hospitals that maintain continuous family medicine outpatient clinics were only 40.8%. Education in outpatient clinic and articlewriting seminars was done less frequently in the secondary hospitals than in the tertiary hospitals.

Evaluation and quality improvement of family medicine training program as well as specialty rotations should be considered in order to foster better family physicians. The efforts have to be made to minimize the difference in quality of each family medicine residency program.