Audit in general practice: educating medical students

This paper describes the third stage in the evolution of methods of teaching on audit in general practice at the Department of General Practice, University of Glasgow. The authors asked the final year students to develop, carry out and submit a written report on an audit project devised by themselves, after briefing and with continued support. Every student asked was successful in producing a report and the standard was generally very high, although only two students completed the audit cycle in the 4 week period. More than half the students (51.7%) found the project valuable or very valuable. As many as 90.6% understood audit better or much better after doing the project and 83.4% thought that the project should continue to be part of the GP attachment. Seventy-eight per cent of the GP tutors thought that teaching audit to undergraduates in general practice was valuable or very valuable, 64.4% reported that the audit had been of benefit to their practice, and 89.9% thought that audit should continue to be part of the GP attachment. This method of teaching students about audit was the most successful of three methods tried. It has produced benefits both for students and for the general practices to which they were attached, ultimately producing benefits for patients.