‘Educational Family Health Centers’ in Family Medicine Resident Training Experience of Şişli Hamidiye Etfal Training and Research Hospital

Abstract

Family medicine residency training began in 1984 in Turkey. Until 2010, 3-year education process of family medicine residency students consisted of clinical rotations. Since 2010, in order to implement the stated objectives and gain the qualifications, 18 months of clinical rotation and 18 months of field training have been arranged. In order to meet the need for field training, the Ministry of Health issued legislation on the establishment of Education Family Health Centers (E-FHC) in 2014. It is expected that the E-FHCs, which are anticipated to fill a significant gap in family medicine speciality field training, in addition to educational services they have to provide services provided by other family health centers. The number of E-FHCs is still insufficient and to increase it, the awareness of educational institutions should be increased, material procurement, modification and repair needs should be facilitated. The establishment of infrastructure by the Health Directorates and the provision of support staff, as well as the planning of the trainer by the family medicine education institutions and the planning of the specialist for the training should be considered as an alternative. It is necessary to arrange population registration and service planning in a way that will allow residence training, to make trainers, residences and other personnels to be employed in such a way that they do not cause any loss of right, and to facilitate the process of permits related to the researches in the field. In this paper, it is aimed to contribute to the improvement of E-FHC process by sharing the experiences about opening and operating of two separate E-FHCs of the Health Sciences University Şişli Hamidiye Etfal Training and Research Hospital Family Medicine Clinic which started to serve in two buildings as of August 2016.