Faculty development as a team sport? Longitudinal engagement of all faculty across a multi-site academic practice.

Problem

Faculty development is usually an individual physician with the desired goal of individual growth and future. In an academic institution with residency, medical school, nurse practitioner students and other learners, all of our staff are indeed “academic” and would be required to teach as part of their day to day work.The lecture will review the process of defining our needs of our faculty and learners, developing a longitudinally based curriculum of educational points that can be delivered in short monthly presentations to improve the faculty skills of all the members of our department.

Approach

At our institution, we have core faculty that are involved in residency education. We have other faculty members that are mainly involved in medical student curriculum and education. However, we have noticed over the past several years, that the need for clinically based teaching has significantly increased. We now have increased pressures for medical student training with the expectation that the quality of training continues to improve. We have had a significant increase in the number of nurse practitioner students rotating through our department. With the increased educational expectations and needs of our learners, we have found that all members of the department are involved in education, as thus are faculty. Traditional faculty development programs usually target a relatively small number of participants, those interested in an academic career, and those faculty early in their tenure. This usual process was not workable in our environment. The needs of our faculty development were:1. “Just in Time” training. 2. Fit into routine schedules.3. Available for all staff at all sites.4. Adaptable to the needs of the faculty and the learners. Initially, a needs assessment was performed to determine the specific perceived needs for faculty development from the perspective of the faculty In addition, recent learners’ evaluation of our faculty strengths and weaknesses were also assessed. Highlights of our program’s topics will be discussed at this lecture-discussion.

Findings

Due to the small number of faculty surveyed, there generally was no significant differences in pre- and post survey responses to faculty's perception of their teaching skills over a variety of areas (direct observation, skills assessment, feedback, etc). However, a majority of those surveyed felt that the longitudinal design and the topics was helpful in maintaining their academic skill set. Even with issues regarding technical difficulties with a multi-site program, a majority of respondents recommended continuing the current format of the longitudinal faculty development.

Consequences

At our institution, with a large faculty engaged in medical school, family medicine residency and interdepartmental education, the role of our faculty is increasing dramatically. Based on these surveys, we will continue to provide this faculty development lecture series and expand into future needs of the staff.