Confidence of academic general internists and family physicians to teach ambulatory procedures

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate and compare the readiness of academic general intern al medicine physicians and academic family medicine physicians to perform a nd teach 13 common ambulatory procedures. DESIGN: Mailed survey. SETTING: Internal medicine and family medicine residency training programs associated with 35 medical schools in 9 eastern states. PARTICIPANTS: Convenience sample of full-time teaching faculty. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A total of 331 general internists and 271 fa mily physicians returned completed questionnaires, with response rates of 5 7% and 65%, respectively. Academic generalists ranked most of the ambulator y procedures as important for primary care physicians to perform; however, they infrequently performed or taught many of the procedures. Overall, comp ared with family physicians, general internists performed and taught fewer procedures, received less training, and were less confident in their abilit y to teach these procedures. Physicians' confidence to teach a procedure wa s strongly associated with training to perform the procedure and performing or precepting a procedure at least 10 times per year. CONCLUSIONS: Many academic general internists do not perform or precept com mon adult ambulatory procedures. To ensure that residents have the opportun ity to learn routine ambulatory procedures, training programs may need to r ecruit qualified faculty, train current faculty, or arrange for academic sp ecialists or community physicians to teach these skills.