Higher education is already feeling the effects of funding reductions, and medical education is likely to be squeezed too. It is crucial that medical educators demonstrate the quality and value of graduates and show that 6 years of extensive experience for young people in the highest academic bracket produces a workforce of considerable and unique value.
Rees and Stephenson write1 that there is a continuing move for more health care to be delivered in the community, requiring more qualified doctors working in the area, leading to an increase in the proportion of the graduates training for general practice. The career aspirations of students change during training and after graduation and are affected by their experiences and by the role models they encounter. Students need to experience these environments early and through their undergraduate training.2–4
The apprenticeship model of general practice teaching also has its advantages and must remain a key element of training. Environmental, social, and economic crises put a great responsibility on medical educationalists to prepare young doctors and strengthen their resilience and resolve to face these challenges.
The General Medical Council with the latest version of Tomorrow's doctors underlines a danger that undergraduate assessment would become more a record of competency than that of understanding and a broad education.5
The development and assessment of professionalism would allow wider thought on behaviour and reflection. In this context we must simply underline and reinforce what The European Academy of Teachers in General Practice and Family Medicine (EURACT) did, and what the Royal College of General Practitioners agreed.
In the European Definition and the EURACT Educational Agenda we fully describe the comprehensive, community orientation, and holistic aspects.6 We have these documents and we must use them to define clearly the actual and future family doctor. We need to be guided and helped to teach these topics, and assess the level of learning by students who are the next family doctors in the community.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2011