Establishing a Practical Foundation for a Program with Input from Future Participants

In Chapters 1 – 3 of this book, Single Case Design—Entrustable Professional Activity (SCD-EPA) is introduced as the methodological core of the two programs presented in Chapters 6 and 7 . Establishing the theoretical (Chapter 2 ) and practical (the first part is worked out in Chapter 4 ) foundation of an integrated training-and-research program constitutes the first phase of SCD-EPA. In this fifth chapter, the remaining part of the practical foundation of the two training programs is presented. A total of eight preceptors at Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital—four with several years of experience and four being relatively new at the time—were interviewed in a semi-structured manner with six core questions revolving around: (1) the activities in their role of preceptor; (2) challenges in those activities; (3) motivations to continue as a preceptor; (4) training needs in their role as preceptor; (5) expectations of a training program for preceptors; and (6) anticipated difficulties in participating in such a training program. The rationale behind interviewing eight preceptors in this exploratory descriptive study was that, assuming a fairly homogenous population, with about six interviews one should capture around 80% of the themes in that population. In this study, the four interviewees who together shared most information covered nearly 85% of the themes in the sample of eight, and the six interviewees who together shared most information covered nearly 95% of the themes in the sample. As expected, the group of eight preceptors constituted a homogenous sample, with only one main difference between experienced and less experienced preceptors: all four interviewees in the latter group shared a struggle due to having to start this new role without any help or explanations (i.e., a lack of both written protocols and formal training), whereas in the experienced group none of the interviewees shared this theme. A total of 39 themes were coded, which in their turn were recoded into broader themes of which the most frequent ones were: (1) the importance of establishing and maintaining good relations; (2) the importance of learning how to teach and design teaching; (3) how to deal with a chronic lack of time due to the nature of working in an overloaded healthcare context; and (4) how to assess and give feedback. These and other themes discussed in this chapter informed phases 2–4 of SCD-EPA as discussed in Chapters 6 and 7 .