Background: In March 2008, with the introduction of a new contract for residents, the School of Paediatrics of the University of Trieste, Italy, enabled the training with family paediatricians among shifts provided during the 5-year-course. This “family paediatrics training” counted active mentoring and collegial discussion of clinical cases coming from everyday activity with the Director of the Department of Paediatrics.
Methods: To assess the experience carried out up to now, we conducted a survey in October 2009 assessing the differences between trainees who performed well-framed rota with family paediatricians (training group) and those who just replaced a family paediatrician as a locum, without any tutoring (control group), through a questionnaire.
Results: Among 41 residents, we collected 32 answers to the questionnaire, 15 coming from the training group and 17 from the control group. The survey shows an overall positive experience of paediatric trainee. The achieved skill seems to reach satisfactory levels. The training group reported more competence compared to control group in chronic child management and implementation of prevention strategies. Some contradictions between family and hospital paediatricians were reported, especially in drugs prescriptions. However, the majority of residents did not want to be a family paediatrician in the future, and one out of five lost their interest in this job.
Conclusions: Although an overall positive experience and the acquisition of some distinguishing skills, the majority of trainees in the School of Paediatrics in Trieste do not think of themselves as family paediatricians in the future or loose their interest in this job during training. A possible explanation could be the greater involvement and complexity of cases and the collegiality of the work in hospital settings. The collegial discussions could be a valuable tool to highlight the difficulties in the apparently common cases in family paediatricians’ work and to help scientific and cultural sharing to contrast isolation.
