Levels of Care: primary care residents' self‐assessment of ability to care for children with chronic health conditions

Abstract

ABSTRACTObjectives To investigate the use of Levels of Care model to measure the self‐assessed ability of physicians in training to care for children with chronic health conditions.Design Questionnaire presenting 45 case scenarios of children with various chronic health conditions was given to 85 residents training in pediatrics (46) or family medicine (39). The resident estimated for each case scenario the Level of Care (LoC I–V) that the resident felt able to provide ‘now, while in training’, and would want to provide when entering ‘practice’.Setting University‐based, postgraduate, primary care specialty training programs in pediatric and family medicine.Participants A total of 85 resident physicians in postgraduate training programs in the primary care specialties of family medicine (FM) and pediatrics (Pd).Results Thirty‐nine family medicine (100%) and 30 pediatric residents (65%) responded. Median Level of Care (LoC FM‐1) that the family medicine residents felt able to provide while in ‘training’ was III and for the pediatric residents (LoC Pd‐1) was IV, χ2 = 42.595, p = 0.0001. The median Level of Care residents wanted to be able to provide in ‘practice’ for each group was LoC‐IV, χ2 = 13.85, p = 0.0078. There were statistically significant differences in responses between family medicine (FM) and pediatric (Pd) residents to both the ‘training’ and ‘practice’ questions.Conclusions A self‐assessment instrument incorporating the Levels of Care (LoC) concept was useful to assess the self‐perceived ability of resident physicians in training to care for children with chronic health conditions.