General practitioners in hospitals

The authors review General Practitioners in Hospitals, a report prepared by the School of Medical Education, University of New South Wales (1993) for the Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council Medical Workforce Group on Hospital Training and Career Development. The authors acknowledge that this report represents the most comprehensive look at GP involvement in hospitals across Australia, but suggest that its conclusion 'general practitioners play a substantial role in the provision of medical care in public hospitals around Australia' may be an overstatement. They discuss shortcomings associated with the study, including: definitional issues; variation in levels of involvement according to hospital type; potential biases introduced by using self-report of hospital administrators as the source of data; insufficient emphasis being placed on the views of GPs; and the validity of extrapolations.