Evaluation on community internship of clinical medicine undergraduates from general practitioner trainers' perspectives

Objective To investigate the status quo and problems in community internship of clinical medicine undergraduates and to provide suggestions for the internship. Methods From June to November, 2016, a questionnaire survey and personal in-depth interview were conducted among the general practitioner (GP) trainers who undertook community internship teaching of clinical medical undergraduates entered Capital Medical University in 2011. Understanding of community internship syllabus, teaching plan formulating, teaching contents, teaching methods and the difficulties in teaching were investigated by questionnaire. The results were analyzed by descriptive statistics. The personal in-depth interviews focused on the problems in community internship, the difficulties of teaching and the suggestions for community internship. Content analysis was used to analyze the interview materials. Results A total of 79 questionnaires were sent out and 72 valid questionnaires were returned. It showed that 70.8% of the GP trainers who participated in the survey understood the syllabus of community internship, 84.7% of them had a teaching plan, and 54.2% of them considered that the time arrangement of the internship was reasonable. The most common teaching contents were chronic disease management, health records establishment, medical history taking and filling medical records. The most frequently used teaching method was demonstrating method while role-playing was the least. The most serious problem in the teaching process was the lack of detailed community internship teaching manual. The 12 GP trainers who participated in the personal in-depth interview thought the time arrangement for community internship was inappropriate, the community teaching work was lack of training and evaluation system, the GP trainers needed a detailed teaching manual for community internship, and incentive mechanism for the GP trainers participated in teaching needed to be established. Conclusion Colleges should attach importance to the community internship of clinical medical undergraduates, put the time of entering community forward and extend the length of the internship, and carry out teaching ability training for GP trainers with community institutions. At the same time, community health institution can reward and assess GP trainers' teaching work through appropriate forms to ensure the teaching level of GP trainers.