Developing a Set of Quality Criteria for Community-Based Medical Education in the UK

Do quality indicators for general practice teaching practices predict good outcomes for students?

“…[21] The physical environment score is made up of a number of factors that were agreed in Cotton et al's work [13] to be important indicators of quality. The absence of a significant relationship between student OSCE performance and faculty perception of the practices' enthusiasm for teaching is interesting; the characteristics of practice teachers, [3,13,22,23,24] especially their enthusiasm for teaching [3,13] have been seen as important in influencing outcomes for students. However, the reliability of our assessments of the enthusiasm of practice teachers is unknown and may be influenced by factors such as relationships within a community of practice [11,12] and local opinion or hearsay.…”

“…[17] For recruitment purposes, a ratio in the range of 1500-2000 is considered desirable. [13] We consider that this range means that doctors are likely to have time to teach.…”

“…Quality assurance of primary care teaching is therefore of great importance to our School and we monitor a variety of indicators including students' feedback about their experiences and the relationships they have had with people in their practices. [11,12] All of our indicators are included in Cotton et al's consensus list [13] and the majority are in the 'essential' category for intensive teaching This study aimed to explore the relationships between a selected group of quality indicators and two outcomes for students; their scores in OSCEs and their experiences of learning in general practice.…”

“…Cotton et al [13] published a common set of quality criteria for community based education developed though national discussion with stakeholders. These included practice factors such as the physical and educational environments, and characteristics of the teachers themselves.…”

“…We included a measure of rurality, which is not listed as an indicator of quality by Cotton et al, [13] but as a number of rural practices are involved in teaching our final year students, we were interested to know if, and how, such rural placements might affect the outcomes.…”