ArticleBJGP open2021
Denigration of general practice as a career choice: The students' perspective. A qualitative study.
Article in BJGP open, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Factors influencing UK medical students' choice of general practice: a systematic review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2026Pooled it
- Addressing hidden tensions and grey areas of general practice: a qualitative study of the experiences of newly qualified GPs attending a course on generalist medicine.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2024Article
- Developing a primary care-initiated hepatitis C treatment pathway in Scotland: a qualitative study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2022Article
- Symbiotic relationships through longitudinal integrated clerkships in general practice.BMC medical education · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGeneral practice in the UK and other parts of the world is facing a recruitment crisis with insufficient numbers of medical students selecting it as a career choice. Denigration of general practice has been postulated as one of the contributing factors.
aimTo explore comments about general practice as a career made by clinical teachers from the medical student's perspective, and in doing so to further understand the current difficulties of recruiting into general practice. DESIGN &
settingA qualitative, explorative study of three focus groups of medical students from two medical schools in northern England.
methodA semi-structured interview format was utilised. The following four questions were posed to the participants about choosing general practice as a career: had they heard negative comments? Had they heard positive comments? Do they think comments influence student career decisions or is it a problem? Could they suggest any solutions to the issue? Results were analysed using thematic analysis.
resultsStudents reported hearing both positive and negative comments about general practice as a career choice. They perceived the comments to potentially influence student career choice. Three underlying themes emerged: the individual (personal characteristics of students affecting the influence that comments have on them); the curriculum (presence and content of general practice teaching); and culture (in the medical school and profession). These were used to postulate a model that may explain how negative comments shape students' perceptions of general practice.
conclusionDenigration of general practice is an ongoing problem within the medical profession and strategies to address it must be developed or recruitment to the specialty will continue to decline. This study suggests a model that can help to understand the complex relationship between different factors that result in negative comments being taken on board by medical students.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.