Identifying appropriate tasks for the preregistration year: modified Delphi technique

Abstract Objectives: To identify the tasks that should constitute the work of preregistration house officers to provide the basis for the development of a self evaluation instrument. Design: Literature review and modified Delphi technique. Setting: Northern Deanery within the Northern and Yorkshire office NHS executive. Subjects: 67 educational supervisors of preregistration house officers. Main outcome measures: Percentage of agreement by educational supervisors to tasks identified from the literature. Results: Over 61% of communication items, 70% of on call patient care items, 75% of routine patient care items, 45% of practical procedure items, and over 63% of self management items achieved over 95% agreement that they should be part of the house job of preregistration house officers. Poor agreement was found for the laboratory and clinical investigations that house officers could perform with or without supervision. Conclusions: The tasks of house officers were identified but issues in using this method and in devising a universally acceptable list of tasks for preregistration house officers were apparent. Key messages More than 100 activities were identified as potential tasks for house officers, and 11 personal abilities were identified as self management skills The ability of preregistration house officers to perform all of the tasks independently would be restricted by their experiences and therefore may depend on the specialty in which they work The deliberation over what are and are not “shared tasks” was evident; some educational supervisors wanted the house officer to be capable of, but not practise, some tasks whereas others did not believe these tasks were within the remit of the house officer The Delphi technique is a useful method for gaining the autonomous opinions of individuals from a large group of geographically distant members