GP training in the UK is associated with improved patient outcomes and high GP trainee satisfaction with their training experience. These positives contrast with the degree of unhappiness expressed by junior doctors (and reflected in their recent campaign for better terms and conditions of work), and recent challenges to assessment processes by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). It is often acknowledged that GP training produces better patient care in training practices. However, the role of GP trainees in improved patient outcomes is rarely considered. In this article we review the current empirical evidence (such as it is) and discuss the potential contribution of GP trainees to patient care.

Previous work has demonstrated that those practices that train postgraduate learners have higher levels of patient satisfaction,1 earlier cancer diagnosis,2 and improved prescribing profiles for broad-spectrum antibiotics.3 While statistically significant, the clinical impact of training is relatively small compared with factors such as patient demographics, deprivation, workforce characteristics, and ethnicity. Nonetheless, the cumulative effect of these small but clinically important outcomes has benefit across the country. We draw a distinction here between the evident contribution that GP trainees make to individual patient care as part of their experiential learning, and the collective improvement in outcomes that becoming a training organisation brings about.

The reasons for these benefits are complex.4 Processes of accreditation (originally piloted and set up by the RCGP in the 1980s) have played an important role in ensuring that practice-related systems and processes are in place, and in particular that there are good patient record summaries. The role of the GP trainer as an educational leader is also important. GP trainers …