Effect of an Immersive Primary Care Training Program on Educational and Clinical Outcomes in an Internal Medicine Residency Training Program: Meeting the Training Needs of a Modern-Day Physician Workforce.

BACKGROUND: Residents planning careers in primary care have unique training needs that are not addressed in traditional internal medicine training programs, where there is a focus on inpatient training. There are no evidence-based approaches for primary care training. OBJECTIVES: Design and test the effect of a novel immersive primary care training program on educational and clinical outcomes. DESIGN: Nested intervention study. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS: Twelve primary care residents, 86 of their categorical peers, and an 11-year historical cohort of 69 primary care trainees in a large urban internal medicine residency training program. INTERVENTIONS: Two 6-month blocks of primary care immersion alternating with two 6-month blocks of standard residency training during the second and third post-graduate years. MAIN MEASURES: Total amount of ambulatory and inpatient training time, subjective and objective educational outcomes, clinical performance on cancer screening, and chronic disease management outcomes. KEY RESULTS: Participants in the intervention increased ambulatory training in both general medicine and specialty medicine and still met all ACGME training requirements. Residents reported improved subjective educational outcomes on a variety of chronic disease management topics and ambulatory care skills. They reported higher satisfaction with the amount of ambulatory training (4.3/5 vs. 3.6/5, p=0.008), attended more ambulatory clinics (242 vs. 154, p<0.001), and carried larger, more complicated panels (173 vs. 90 patients, p<0.001). They also performed better on diabetes management (86% vs. 76% control, p<0.001). Alumni who completed the intervention reported higher primary care career preparation (79% response rate) than those who did not (85% response rate) among an 11-year cohort of primary care alumni (4/5 vs. 3/5, p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: A primary care training program that provides clinical immersion in the ambulatory setting improved educational outcomes for trainees and clinical outcomes for their patients. Providing more training in the ambulatory environment should be a priority in graduate medical education.