Characterising generalism in clinical practice: a systematic mixed studies review protocol

Generalist physician care is associated with improved patient outcomes. Despite initiatives to promote generalism in educational settings, recruitment to generalist disciplines remains less than required to serve societal needs. Increasingly this impacts not just general practice but also generalist specialties such as internal medicine, surgery, and paediatrics. One potential factor for this deficit is a lack of explicit attention to generalism as a praxis, including clarifying key aspects of generalist expertise.

To examine empirical clinical literature on generalism, and characterise how generalism is described and delivered by physicians in primary and secondary care.

A systematic mixed studies review (SMSR) including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods studies, and systematic reviews of physician generalist practice.

MEDLINE, Psycinfo, SocINDEX, Embase, Ovid HealthSTAR, Scopus, and Web of Science will be searched for English language studies from 1999 to present, using a structured search. Given study heterogeneity, quality appraisal will not be performed. Two reviewers will perform study selection for each study. Data extraction will focus on how generalism is defined and characterised, including the clinical care provided by generalists and patient experiences of generalist care. Quantitative and qualitative data will be summarised in tabular and narrative form. Convergent synthesis design will then be used to synthesise quantitative and qualitative data.

Findings will characterise generalism and generalist practice from a grassroots clinical perspective. By identifying similarities and differences across generalist disciplines, this work will inform more focused educational initiatives on generalism at undergraduate and postgraduate level, including collaborations between generalist disciplines.