Abstract
Background
Medical education leaders across the world have been calling for a competency-driven approach to education. Defining the competencies required of a physician ready for practice is a crucial step to optimize medical training programs, but there is no clear overarching framework of competencies to guide the training and assessment of resident physicians in China. We studied a multidisciplinary group of healthcare and education professionals in order to understand their conceptualization of the competencies essential to a competent physician in China.
Methods
A 6-item questionnaire was distributed electronically to 265 physicians, nurses, medical school administrators, and public health school faculty affiliated with Wuhan University in Hubei, China. Respondents were asked for basic demographic data and to “describe the core abilities of an excellent physician.” Open-ended responses were qualitatively analyzed.
Findings
Response rate was 29 %; the majority of responses (62 %) were from physicians. Five major themes arose from the data: (1) communication and collaboration (30.0 %); (2) morality, ethics, and professionalism (25.7 %); (3) patient care (24.6 %); (4) scholarship (16.8 %); and (5) quality assurance systems (3.0 %).
Interpretation
This paper represents a step toward creating a culturally acceptable physician competency framework for the training and assessment of China’s future physicians. Future direction includes surveying a larger and representative population for thematic saturation and evaluating the implementation of such a competency framework.
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This study was approved as study 09-126-B by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Chicago and by the Ethics Committee of Wuhan University.
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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Lio, J., Ye, Y., Reddy, S. et al. Developing a Competency Framework for Medical Education in China: a Qualitative Study. Med.Sci.Educ. 26, 743–748 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-016-0287-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-016-0287-y