Family medicine transition period training in Turkey

Vocational training of General practice is a subject of discussion since 1970 in many European countries. In 2003 a health care reform is decided to be implemented in Turkey and by the time of implementation of reform studies, there had been negotiations among the stakeholders wtihin general practice and It was decided that a retraining program is essential for the practicing physicians who are medical faculty graduates or specialists other than family medicine to practice in primary care. A two phased temporary retraining program that is called transition period training (TPT) was planned to meet the urgent need of practicing doctors as family physicians. TPT covers all the physicians who wants to work as a family physician except the family medicine specialists. First phase TPT is an adaptation course, conducted face to face and second phase is a blended learning (b-learning), that is a combination of e-learning and face to face competency based skill training.