ABSTRACT
For many years, the professional development of general practitioners (GPs) has been through exposure to clinical work in hospitals and general practices, increasingly the latter. Although the experience of professional development in the hospital setting is often a challenging and interesting time, many trainees find that after four months in a hospital specialty setting that they have learnt all they are going to learn, which is relevant to primary care, in the context of the particular attachment. The trainee’s supervisor is able to validate the entry by electronically endorsing it with a particular professional competence to which the recorded experience relates. A more vibrant activity, to which all GP trainees have had access for many years, is the educational programme which runs in parallel to their other professional activities. For learning to be effective, it needs to be done in the knowledge of what style of learning is personal to the learner.
