Postgraduate education in general practice is an essential part of cultivating high-quality general practitioners. However, the postgraduate education in general practice in China started relatively late and has revealed some problems in practice. How to effectively implement the national guidelines for accelerating the innovation and development of medical education is an important issue for graduate education in general practice in the new era.

Using graduate theses in general practice as a starting point, this study analyzes the current status and issues of graduate education in general practice, and provides reflections and suggestions.

A literature search was conducted in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database for theses related to "General Practice" published up to December 20, 2023. Descriptive analysis of the annual publication volume, as well as publication volume by region, province, and institution, was performed using SPSS 16.0. ArcGIS 10.8 was used to layer and display the number and regional distribution of theses on a map. CiteSpace 6.2.R4 software was employed to process the literature data, generating keyword cluster maps, keyword time series line charts, and keyword hotspot analysis. Prior to using CiteSpace 6.2.R4, a file containing bibliographic information for 1 834 theses was exported to NoteExpress software, then uniformly converted to Refworks-CiteSpace format for analysis of research directions, hot topics, and other aspects of the theses.

A total of 1 834 graduate theses in general practice were retrieved (1 829 master's theses and 5 doctoral theses) , involving 821 supervisors. The highest number of publications was from East China (614 theses, 33.40%) . Among provinces, Anhui had the most publications (228 theses, 12.43%) . The number of theses showed a rapid growth trend, entering an explosive growth phase in 2015 with a sustained upward trend, with an average year-on-year growth rate of 51.5% (P < 0.05) . Among the supervisors, 445 (54.20%) supervised only one cohort of graduate students, while 227 (27.65%) supervised three or more cohorts. In terms of research direction, aside from general practice, health education, and health management, the main research topics included hypertension, heart failure, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. A total of 439 theses (23.94%) explicitly involved studies on micro-mechanisms.

Graduate education in general practice has shown positive results under policy support, with the scale of graduate training growing rapidly. The training objectives are relatively clear, but the discipline's characteristics still need to be further refined. The supervisor team is continuously expanding, but further improvement of team development are needed. The scale of graduate student enrollment also needs to be expanded.