Preparedness for Clinical Practice: What I Knew on My First Day as a Newly Graduated Doctor
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Abstract
Methods: A survey was sent to PGY1 doctors in 2022 and 2023 six weeks after commencing clinical practice asking them to rate (using a 5-point scale) how prepared they felt starting as a doctor across a range of skills. The respondents were also asked to rank the top three skills in which they wished they had more knowledge when they started, and to provide free text responses with regard to factors that proved challenging during their transition into clinical practice.
Results: There were 128 complete survey responses in 2022 and 113 in 2023. Sixty five percent were female, 33% male, and 1% other. Almost all respondents felt prepared for examining patients, understanding common clinical conditions, taking a history, and communicating effectively and sensitively with patients. Approximately half of all respondents reported being prepared for prescribing safely and calculating medication dosages, 37% for participating in an arrest or resuscitation, and 30% felt prepared for looking after sick and deteriorating patients. When asked to rank the top three skills in which they wished they had more knowledge, 77% of respondents ranked looking after sick and deteriorating patients within their top three.
Conclusions: Most PGY1 doctors felt well prepared for a range of clinical skills at the commencement of clinical practice. However, there were a number of critical patient management skills that are expected and required of PGY1 doctors for which many respondents felt unprepared. The skills taught in the undergraduate programme should accurately reflect the skill mix required by PGY1 doctors for the practise of medicine in New Zealand.
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