General practice education and training - could China adopt Australian apprenticing Model?

Objective Apprenticing model of training is a feature of Australian general practice training and education program.General practitioners provide training in practice.This model can make the trainees get the skills for general medical practice by providing primary,preventive,patient-centred,comprehensive,continuous and community-based services.Outstanding general practitioners are major force of the training program.To guarantee the quality of general practice training RACGP issued standards for general practice training and education,which defined the basic conditions of trainer,the conditions of trainer for the first year training,the demand for the procedure and site of training.China′s general practice trainers were dominated by university teachers with non-clinical experiences and hospital specialists with specific clinical skill and knowledge.As result of over-emphasizing higher education background and clinical specialist title,community doctors,especially traditional Chinese medical practitioners,almost have no chance to be selected as general practice trainers.Authors hold that apprenticing model of training should be carried on and developed by selecting and training the outstanding community doctors to be trainers,and gradually choosing them to be the major force in general practice training and education.Thus the general practitioners can be trained who are of feature of general practice,can provide community patient based services,and possess practical skills.