Motives and Experiences of the Competent Supervisor in General Practice – A Qualitative Study

ABSTRACT

At the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, general practitioners (GPs) teach undergraduate medical students in three stages of the curriculum. Not much is known about the GPs - motives for teaching, neither about their experiences in this process. Qualitative interviews were carried out with GPs who were known to have a positive attitude towards and interest in teaching and student supervision and assessed by the teaching-staff as skilled. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. In the transcripts themes, categories and meaning units were identified according to a content analysis method. Two main themes were related to GPs' interest in teaching activities; personal issues and organizational issues. The personal issues constituted the reasons the GPs have for their positive inclination towards teaching, and consisted of early private experiences, an interest in the future, an interest in the students' development of clinical skills, and pleasure taken in teaching and personal growth. The organizational issues were the facilitating and impairing factors in the teaching process: the workload, health centre conditions and university conditions. The positive GPs who were interviewed experienced many benefits from their teaching. However, conditions could be improved regarding time and workload. Support from the health centre is an important factor in this field. The implementation of the findings to other health care systems is discussed.