TY - JOUR T1 - Characterising generalism in clinical practice: a systematic mixed studies review protocol JF - BJGP Open JO - BJGP Open DO - 10.3399/BJGPO.2021.0029 SP - BJGPO.2021.0029 AU - Martina Kelly AU - Sarah Cheung AU - Mariam Keshavjee AU - Anna Stevenson AU - Josephine Elliott AU - Surinder Singh AU - Madeleine Foster AU - Sophie Park Y1 - 2021/04/21 UR - http://bjgpopen.org/content/early/2021/04/23/BJGPO.2021.0029.abstract N2 - Background Generalist physician care is associated with improved patient outcomes. Despite initiatives to promote generalism in educational settings, recruitment to generalist disciplines remains less than required to serve societal needs. Increasingly this impacts not just general practice but generalist specialties such as internal medicine, surgery and paediatrics. One potential factor for this deficit is a lack of explicit attention to generalism as a praxis, including clarifying key aspects of generalist expertise.Aim To examine empirical clinical literature on generalism and characterise how generalism is described and delivered by physicians in primary and secondary care.Design & Setting Systematic mixed studies review including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods studies and systematic reviews of physician generalist practice.Method Medline, Psycinfo, Socioindex, EMBASE, OVID Healthstar, Scopus, Web of Science will be searched for English language studies from 1999 to present, using a structured search. Given study heterogeneity we will not perform quality appraisal. Two reviewers will perform study selection for each study. Data extraction will focus on how generalism is defined and characterised, including the clinical care provided by generalists and patient experiences of generalist care. Quantitative and qualitative data will be summarised in tabular and narrative form. Convergent synthesis design will then be used to synthesise quantitative and qualitative data.Conclusion Findings will characterise generalism and generalist practice from a grass-roots clinical perspective. By identifying similarities and differences across generalist disciplines, this work will inform more focused educational initiatives on generalism at undergraduate and postgraduate level, including collaborations between generalist disciplines. ER -