Clinical factual recall and patient management skill in general practice

A battery of assessment measures, including MCQ measures of factual recall, MEQ measures of problem-solving skills, measures of attitudes, intelligence and ability, and personality factors, was administered to the trainee intakes of a number of post-graduate training courses for general practice on a pre-course/post-course basis (trainee sample N = 80). The tests were administered in parallel to a similar number of registered general practitioners (N = 80). The trainees in the sample were also regularly assessed by their teachers, hospital consultants and registered general practitioners by means of rating scales described below. In this paper, attention is focused on the MCQ and MEQ measures. The results show significant improvement in post-test scores, particularly among the poorer students and particularly in the crucial area of problem solving skills. This was related to the organizational structure of th courses: the poorer students gained greatest benefit from courses which featured the regular and frequent use of seminars and group teaching methods. Below we have given the correlations between the pre- and post-test scores for both the best students and poorest students as determined by the in-course performance measure, the rating scales used by the consultants and general practitioner tutors.