Huisartsgeneeskunde: aantrekkingskracht en beroepstrouw ... - Lirias

52 Making General Practice Attractive: Encouraging GP attraction and Retention KCE Reports 90
disappears after controlling for gender and differences between student populations of
Dutch and French speaking parts of Belgium (appendix 3.8, table 5) u .
Both groups of students report that teachers were mostly medical specialists. The
bivariate analysis shows a slightly different perception about the professional orientation
of teachers, but the multivariate model (appendix 3.8, table 5) shows that this
orientation of the teachers does not have any influence on (not) becoming a GP.
Students have similar opinion about the way the lessons and clerkship provided a good
base for their specialty choice.
The students do have different perceptions about the perception of GP image during
their studies, the intellectual challenge they experienced during GP clerkship and how
they were influenced by GPs. GP students have a stronger impression that teachers
present family medicine/general practice as being inferior to other specialties. The
second difference relates to the intellectual challenge of the GP clerkship. Students who
choose general practice are, in general, more outspoken about the amount of
intellectual challenge of the GP clerkship. Students who choose another specialty tend
think about a lack of intellectual challenge of a GP clerkship. The last difference is the
fact that students choosing to become a specialist are more influenced by a GP who
gave them a bad impression than students wanting to become a GP.
The binary logistic regression confirms this last finding (appendix 3.8, table 5). Missing an
intellectual challenge during GP clerkship and meeting a GP who did not give a good
impression have a really demotivating influence on choosing the GP specialization: the
chance on becoming a GP significantly decreases. On the opposite, the probability of
choosing GP increases (odds ratio 4.127 [95% CI (2,329-7,314)]) when students had the
impression that the teachers considered GP as an inferior choice of profession. The
difference between female and male students is statistically significant (chance on
choosing GP as specialty is higher with female students) but there was no difference
between students from French- and Dutch-speaking universities.
3.6.3 Perception of the GP profession by the students
3.6.3.1 General practice: a lonely profession?
The table below shows the students’ perception of different characteristics of the GP
profession in Belgium. The strongest relationship (effect size = 0,400) can be found on
the aspect of ‘General Practice is a solitary profession’ and specialty choice. Students
who choose to become a GP do not seem to perceive the profession as a solitary one
in contrast with the other students.
u Before putting the statements in a binary logistic regression the answering categories were dichotomised.
E.g. completely disagree, disagree and disagree a bit became ‘disagree’ and agree a bit, agree and
completely disagree became ‘agree’.