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50 Making General Practice Attractive: Encouraging GP attraction and Retention KCE Reports 90
differences for students at French-speaking or Dutch-speaking universities (appendix
3.8, table 4) the influence of these moments, where students may become certain about
their specialty choice, on making a career choice disappears.
3.6.2.2 Experiences with general practice: importance of GP clerkship
Focusing on the experiences students had already had with general practice, only 37,1%
of the students wanting to specialize and 38,2% of the students who choose general
practice declare that they had a GP Clerkship in their 1 st or 2 nd year of medical studies.
Teaching formats ‘basic disciplines’ and ‘specialties’ have a great influence on the
students. They influence the future specialists on their motivation not to choose family
medicine/general practice. The most impressive difference on specialty choice can be
found in the ‘GP Clerkship’; 77% of the seventh year students wanting to become a GP
mentioned this in opposite to the students who want to specialize (36,5%). The
association of ‘GP Clerkship’ on making their specialty choice in seventh year also
appears to be the highest (Cramer’s V = 0,383). Students who don’t want to become
GP also mention to have had less ‘GP Clerkship’ (17,3% - 7,2%).
The multivariate model (appendix 3.8, table 4) shows the importance of the ‘GP
clerkship’ and ‘Lectures on specialties’. When students mention that the GP clerkship
influenced their choice of specialty, the odds of choosing family medicine/general
practice as specialization increases with 8.248 [95% CI (3,758-18,103)]. When students
mention that the lectures about specialties influenced their specialty choice, the odds
ratio that students choose to become a GP is about 0.265 [95% CI (0,108-0,649)].
Who and what defined the image students have about GP’s? All students seem to have
been most influenced by the clerkship (73,4% - 84,3%) and their supervisor (58,6% -
80,0). Secondly they report the influence of personal medical experiences (61,2% -
61,4%) and thirdly of the lecturers and assistants (52,2% - 39,3%) and in accordance the
lectures (43,2 – 20,0). All these influencing factors, except ‘personal medical
experiences’ seem to have a statistically significant different association with the
specialty choice. The students’ own general practitioner also seems to have a
considerable influence, equal for all seventh year students. Looking at these variables in
a binary logistic regression and controlled for gender and differences between student
population of Dutch and French speaking part of Belgium (appendix 3.8, table 4) the
only statistically significant effect on becoming a GP can be found in the influence of
family or acquaintances working in the medical sector on defining the image that
students have about GP’s. The odds ratios that students choose family medicine/general
practice is about 2.120 [95% CI (1,060-4,241)] when family or acquaintances working in
the medical sector are mentioned to be responsible for the image students have about
general practice.
Table 8 shows the results of a number of statements t about the attitudes towards
studying and some variables describing perception of medical education, in particular
courses in general practice.
t
Students were able to answer by means of a 6-point Likert scale where the first answering possibility was
‘do not agree at all’ and the sixth category was ‘totally agree’.