Family medicine internship support during the COVID-19 pandemic in Cape Town, South Africa – A narrative report

Gaironesa Solomon,Raeesah Fakier,Ayesha Allie,Mosedi Namane,Junaid Omar,Daniel Tadmor,Kamaludin Ashtiker,Colyn Le Roux

doi:10.4102/phcfm.v12i1.2661

Abstract

The health-service redesign that came with the preparation for the surge of COVID-19 had a potential of disrupting the Family Medicine internship programme like it did to many other health and academic programmes. A team of Cape-Town based Community Health Centre (CHC) doctors mitigated this challenge by designing an innovative tool that facilitated ongoing supervision of the interns in order to achieve the outcomes of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

Highlights

In South Africa (SA), internship of newly qualified medical doctors is considered part of medical training
The supervision of SA-medical interns during a Family Medicine rotation is based on the premise that the accredited training platforms have the capacity to expose interns to a full package of primary care services within a community.[1]
Feedback from interns suggests that this alternative supervision method is enjoyable, promotes supportive relations between interns and supervisors and creates opportunities to learn from each other

Summary

Background

In South Africa (SA), internship of newly qualified medical doctors is considered part of medical training. A team comprising of medical officers (experienced in rendering primary care), communityservice doctors (who completed their internship at the end of 2019) and a Family Physician (well-versed in the primary-healthcare approach) participated in the development of the Vanguard Supervision Tool for Medical Interns (VaSTMI-COV19) using a modified Delphi approach. This approach is a communication process of experts over multiple rounds of deliberations, which allows them to reach a consensus about a framework they are developing. M&M, morbidity & mortality; PUI, person under investigation or suspect for COVID-19; PPE, personal protective equipment; C2AIR2, caring, competence, accountability, integrity, responsiveness and respect.

Conclusion

Data availability statement