The star of general practice

These dimensions are not mutually exclusive. They all inter-relate. Their purpose is to provide a series of focal points to group the various knowledge, attitudes and skills required of a general practitioner, which can be diagrammatically represented by a five pointed star (Figure 1). The description of the domains in Table 2, is not exhaustive. It is intended to demonstrate how the knowledge, attitudes and skills of a general practitioner can be concisely described by a small number of categories. This framework is offered as a means of organising the long and detailed lists that describe what GPs do. These domains can be a vehicle for examining a GP curriculum or be used for program evaluation. They provide a description of the skills of a competent GP that can be used in many situations but also could be used to describe the skills of other professional groups, for example, teaching. This paper has presented a description of the six domains or skills required by a general practitioner. The purpose is to provide a description that is both easy to remember and yet sufficiently comprehensive to cover all the key competencies, and objective to encourage debate in this area.