Multicenter evaluation of primary care internal medicine residency training. Are practice goals met

Over the past decade primary care internal medicine residencies, combining inpatient and outpatient training, were developed with two goals: 1) to provide more appropriate training for practice and 2) to increase the number of general internists.l2 Although recent studies report that graduates from these programs choose primary care careers,3 the quality of ambulatory patient care practiced by residents in these new programs has not been documented. This study reports an assessment of the quality of outpatient care provided by 26 2nd-year primary care residents in six university-affiliated training programs. Our goal was to assess the clinical ambulatory practice of residents currently in training. Using a chart-based audit, patient