The fall and rise of generalism: perceptions of generalist practice amongst medical students.

The Royal College of General Practitioners describes generalism as expertise in whole person medical care[1]. According to the Shape of Training review, there is a need to train more generalists to deal with the changing pressures that face today’s health services, such as growing numbers of patients with multiple chronic morbidities[2,3]. General practitioners (GPs) are the largest number of trained generalists, however evidence suggests that practicing GPs experience a number of barriers to the delivery of expert generalist care[3,4]. Work is underway to address these barriers at postgraduate level. However there has not been research into this at undergraduate level. This study looks at medical students opinions of generalist practice at Warwick Medical School (WMS). It explores medical students existing understanding of expert generalist practice, and experiences of training within the curriculum. In order to highlight areas of work needed to address the Shape of Training recommendations.