Views of Family Medicine Trainees of a Teaching Hospital in Riyadh regarding their Hospital Rotations: A Qualitative Study

Objective: To explore Family Medicine Trainees views regarding the hospital component of their Family Medicine (FM) training program.

Methodology: This is a qualitative focus group discussion based study. Thirteen trainees, eight from final year of FM training program and five from third year of the same program participated in the study. The structure for discussion included a previously distributed and completed questionnaire that included three sections. The first section was evaluation of the satisfaction of trainees with the different hospital specialties rotations. The second section related to reasons for rating the different rotations as excellent and very good. The third section related to deficiencies in training for those rotations which received a score of 3-5. The items in the questionnaire were utilized in the focus group discussion. Two facilitators who were investigators facilitated the discussion. The data was qualitatively analyzed to identify emergent themes and subthemes that described the trainees’ views.

Results: The trainees highlighted the following views: Teaching in the hospital component is not relevant to the needs of Family Medicine trainees. Duration of the hospital posts should be reviewed. Emphasis should be on out-patient clinics rather than in-patient. More emphasis must be given to procedural skills, minor surgery and teaching in clinical contexts.

Conclusion: Hospital training component of the Family Medicine training program should be reviewed, as the structure and its implementation doesn’t reflect the views of trainees regarding its relevance to their day to day practice.