73. "I just don't want to kill anybody": The first six months of postgraduate trainings

This paper describes a qualitative study that used focus groups and individual interviews to explore newly graduated medical students’ experience of the first six months of a postgraduate training programme. This study explored the residents’ concerns, changes that occurred and the influences the residents attributed to those changes during the first six months, this paper focuses on the residents’ experience of responsibility during this initial training period. Residents felt there was a huge leap in responsibility when they made the transition from being a medical student to being a doctor, specifically in the areas of knowledge, practice management, and relationships. This paper describes how the residents felt there was a disconnect between their experience of responsibility as a medical student and their experience of responsibility as a doctor. Residents were concerned they lacked the necessary medical experience and expertise for someone wearing the title “doctor”. It was not until residents felt relatively confident that they were not going to harm patients with their knowledge that they were able to begin the process of understanding what it meant to be the family physician, which allowed them to begin identifying with the role of family medicine resident. This process took weeks for some residents and several months for others. This study lays the groundwork for better understanding the transition experience from undergraduate to postgraduate training from the resident’s perspective. This paper focuses specifically on the concerns residents had adjusting to their new responsibilities and the implications this might have for medical educators and curriculum developers. Hirsh DA., Ogur B, Thibault GE, Cox M. “Continuity” as an Organizing Principle for Clinical Education Reform. The New England Journal of Medicine 2007 (Feb):858-866. Kendall ML, Hesketh EA, Macpherson SG. The learning environment for junior doctor training – what hinders, what helps. Medical Teacher 2005; 25:619 – 24. Luthy C, Perrier A, Perrin E, Cedrascht C, Allaz AF. Exploring the major difficulties perceived by residents in training: a pilot study. Swiss Medical Weekly 2004; 134:612-17