Abstract
Family physicians have a key role to play in strengthening district health services in South Africa. There are a number of barriers to the supply of these specialists in family medicine, one of which is the quality of workplace-based training and low pass rate in the national exit examination. The South African Academy of Family Physicians in collaboration with the Royal College of General Practitioners has adopted a short course to train clinical trainers and a process of formative assessment visits (FAVs) for clinical trainers in the workplace. Training programmes have struggled to implement the FAVs and this article reports on the experience at Stellenbosch University and the issues identified. Clinical trainers who participated in FAVs mostly set developmental goals for themselves that focused on improving the learning environment and consolidating personal skills in training and assessment. The FAVs were beneficial for the family physician trainers, their managers and the academic family physicians at the university. The tools and process for conducting the FAVs may be of value to other programmes.
Highlights
Physicians have a key role to play in achieving South Africa’s health reforms and policy goals.[1]
The effect of the training of clinical trainers (TCT), appears to diminish over time and by six months students of those who participated could no longer detect a change.[9]. These findings suggested that in addition to the TCT there was a need for an ongoing process of support and formative development of clinical trainers.[8]
South African Family Practice is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd, Medpharm Publications, and Informa UK Limited
Summary
Physicians have a key role to play in achieving South Africa’s health reforms and policy goals.[1]. Keeping the instructions and forms brief and practical helped to frame the visit as personal and supportive rather than administrative or bureaucratic.[16] The visits took 3–4 hours, which is similar to the mean reported elsewhere.[17] The qualities of the visitor may be important and might include skills in listening, assessment and giving effective feedback.[16] Recording of the visit in a simple one- to two-page form that summarised the overall findings of the visit to the facility as well as personal goals and actions for the trainer was important Such records allowed clear agreement on what needed to be done, and enabled communication with other stakeholders and follow-up at the visit. Trainers may be interested in supportive networks[18] and the South African Academy of Family Physicians has set up a special interest group that could potentially develop into such a network of clinical trainers
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