[Responses to a questionnaire on laboratory examinations performed by graduates of Jichi Medical School in rural practice].

Graduates from Jichi Medical School are obligated to work at rural clinics or hospitals, where most of them are the only medical doctor in the house. Our need to continuously improve medical education, including the learning that takes place in the clinical setting, requires us to understand how these graduates actually use laboratory examinations and what examinations they find most important in their practice. We designed a questionnaire to address these questions. Three hundred sixty-eight graduate physicians working at clinics or hospitals in both rural or urban areas were asked to complete the questionnaire, providing information on the size of their institution, the laboratory equipment and examinations that they have direct access to, and what examinations they find most important. Two hundred seventy-eight (75.5%) of the 368 recipients responded. More than seventy percent of the respondents reported that their institutions had electrocardiographs, abdominal and cardiac ultrasonographs, urinalysis test paper, and portable blood glucose meters; and more than half of them reported having used these instruments without assistance in emergency situations and outside of ordinary office hours. Moreover, a majority of the respondents said that they considered it important that a physician is able to use these instruments without the help of other staff members. These responses clearly show the importance and usefulness of covering examination techniques and the principles of laboratory medicine in medical education.