Preparedness for Clinical Practice

Abstract

The last comprehensive study measuring the preparedness of physicians early in their practicing careers, the 1991 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's survey of young physicians, found that 80% of respondents thought their formal medical education did a "good" or "excellent" job of training them for clinical practice. However, many respondents felt unprepared for a variety of conditions they would encounter in their professional life, such as identifying depression, treating patients with severe disabilities, and treating elderly patients.¹ Subsequent specialty-specific studies have underlined these apparent gaps in physician readiness for practice. Physicians in pediatrics,² general preventive medicine,³ rural practice,⁴ and neurosurgery⁵ have been found to be underprepared for conditions and tasks for which residency ideally should have prepared them.