Clinical experience during family medicine residency training

We report the total clinical experience for one family medicine resident who documented every patient encounter during his three years of residency training, and compare experience with model practice patients with that in other training sites. There were 7,671 encounters with 4,449 patients, for 17,660 problem contacts and 679 procedures. Encounter and problem activity for model practice patients constituted one fifth of the total experience. Model practice patients were older than patients, and were seen more often in the office than in the hospital. Most clinical experience with acute infections, depression, and obesity was gained with model practice patients. Most experience with pneumonia, normal delivery, myocardial infarction, and chronic lung disease was acquired with other patients, and most procedures were performed on them. Personal patients of the resident within the model practice provided the greatest experience with continuity of care. These data support the value of the model practice as an important supplement to traditional hospital-based patient populations for training family physicians.