Zusammenfassung

Background: Well-educated and highly-trained physicians are an essential part of high-quality health care. Therefore, quality assurance in medical education must be one of the priorities of health systems. We researched and analysed responses from physicians after completion of internship (IS) and their mentors to questions regarding preparedness to IS and IS itself. Methods: In this cross-sectional study electronic surveys were sent to 298 physicians, having completed the IS between February 2014 and February 2015, and to their 200 mentors. Ordinal reponses of two independent groups were compared by Mann-Whitney-U test, while Kruskal-Wallis test was used for comparing more than two groups. Frequency distributions of practical procedures that were completed by interns in required quantities were compared between institutions by χ²-test. The same test was used for comparing frequency distributions of binary responses between clinical departments. Results: Statistically significant differences were found in the following: in reported preparedness for IS between graduates of the two Slovenian medical faculties; in realisation of practical procedures in quantities as prescribed in the IS program between different health institutions; in agreement with statements about satisfaction between different clinical departments and different institutions; and in reported active participation in patient care between different clinical departments. Conclusions: In this study we identified differences in phisicians' preparedness for IS between the graduates of the two Slovenian medical faculties, as well as differences in realization of IS program between health institutions and clinical departments. Alongside presented descriptive statistics these data allow evaluation of the current quality of IS in Slovenia. Furthermore, the results of this study will permit assessment of quality improvement after realisation of planned IS program renovation.