Don't GPs have to be good clinicians any more?

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7326.1429

BMJ 2001;323:1429 ( 15 December )

Letters

Don't GPs have to be good clinicians any more?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ I agree that the selection of doctors is far from perfect, but I am concerned that the emphasis shown by Pattersonet al on key competencies for general practitioner registrarsin Career focus will encourage the selection of politically correctcandidates with little clinical acumen.¹

Of the 11 key competencies quoted, only one, remarkably, related to clinical skills. The other 10 competencies, all managementrelated, could easily have been condensed into two or three. Aren'tprofessional integrity, coping with pressure, and empathy andsensitivity personal attributes in the same way as motivationand flexibility are? Aren't organising and planning skills, legaland political awareness, problem solving, and communication skillsalso part of team involvement and managing others? And what onearth is conceptual thinking? In this new world of general practitionertraining I am already feeling deficient.

I see a similar trend in my own hospital's training days in the . . . [Full text of this article]