Introduction:

Residency in general practice and family medicine (GP/FM) is essential for acquiring knowledge and skills. As patients play a fundamental role in residents’ training, it is important to understand their perception of GP/FM residents.

Objectives:

To evaluate patients’ perception of the role of GP/FM residents and their trust in the medical care provided by them at USF Santiago de Leiria, a family unit in Portugal.

Methods:

Cross-sectional study with a convenience sample of 450 patients of USF Santiago through a questionnaire consisting of a sociodemographic survey and questions designed to assess patients' perception of the role of GP/FM residents.

Results:

We obtained 405 valid questionnaires, where 87.7% of patients reported having already had an appointment with a resident and 57.0% reported that they had been previously explained what medical residency was. Of the patients who had already been consulted by a resident, the majority believed that residency was important for the training of family physicians (95.0%). When asked whether they accepted the consultation to be carried out by a resident, 94.2% responded affirmatively, however when asked whether they felt free to refuse to be seen by a resident, only 70.1% replied positively. Of the total sample, 93.3% reported feeling comfortable communicating their problems to residents and 96.0% felt confident in the care they received from them.

Conclusions:

Although there is still some lack of knowledge about what residency is, most patients believe that residency in general practice is important for the training of future family physicians and accept their consultations to be carried out by residents.

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