Identifying appropriate tasks for the preregistration year: modified Delphi technique

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.