The Registrar Clinical Encounters in Training (ReCEnT) cohort study: updated protocol.

Background: During vocational general practice training, the content of each trainee's (in Australia, registrars') in-consultation clinical experience is expected to entail a breadth of conditions that exemplify general practice, enabling registrars to gain competency in managing common clinical conditions and common clinical scenarios. Prior to the Registrar Clinical Encounters in Training (ReCEnT) project there was little research into the content of registrars' consultations despite its importance to quality of training. ReCEnT aims to document the consultation-based clinical and educational experiences of individual Australian registrars.

Methods: ReCEnT is an inception cohort study. It is comprised of closely interrelated research and educational components. Registrars are recruited by participating general practice regional training organisations. They provide demographic information about themselves, their skills, and their previous training. In each of three 6-month long general practice training terms they provide data about the practice where they work and collect data from 60 consecutive patient encounters using an online portal. Analysis of data uses standard techniques including linear and logistic regression modelling. The ReCEnT project has approval from the University of Newcastle Human Research Ethics Committee, Reference H-2009-0323.

Discussion: Strengths of the study are the granular detail of clinical practice relating to patient demographics, presenting problems/diagnoses, medication decisions, investigations requested, referrals made, procedures undertaken, follow-up arranged, learning goals generated, and in-consultation help sought; the linking of the above variables to the presenting problems/diagnoses to which they pertain; and a very high response rate. The study is limited by not having information regarding severity of illness, medical history of the patient, full medication regimens, or patient compliance to clinical decisions made at the consultation. Data is analysed using standard techniques to answer research questions that can be categorised as: mapping analyses of clinical exposure; exploratory analyses of associations of clinical exposure; mapping and exploratory analyses of educational actions; mapping and exploratory analyses of other outcomes; longitudinal 'within-registrar' analyses; longitudinal 'within-program' analyses; testing efficacy of educational interventions; and analyses of ReCEnT data together with data from other sources. The study enables identification of training needs and translation of subsequent evidence-based educational innovations into specialist training of general practitioners.