The systematic approach to faculty development activities for biomedical educators

Abstract

Introduction: The term continuing professional developmentencompasses competencies required to practice the high qualitymedicine, including medical, managerial, ethical, social, andpersonal skills, whereas continuing medical education refers onlyto expanding the knowledge and skills required by physicians. Thecompetencies for basic science faculty identified are managementand administration, teaching, assessments, curriculumdevelopment, and research. This study aimed to evaluate theoutcomes of faculty development initiatives at Avalon UniversitySchool of Medicine and examine the optimal approach to facultydevelopment activities.Methods: This is a survey-based quantitative study. A crosssectionalsurvey was conducted after implementing the facultydevelopment activities. We took thirteen basic science facultymembers as a unit and recruited them for different facultydevelopment activities from 2015. Faculty members were involvedin various faculty development courses, workshops, and trainingsessions. A survey was conducted among faculty membersusing a questionnaire on the Likert scale to identify if there areany increased knowledge or skills on teaching and assessmentmethods, educational scholarship, and scholarly activities afterimplementing faculty development initiatives. The facultyresponses were tabulated and quantified in the Excel sheet andanalyzed by SPSS software. Results: All thirteen faculty members responded to thequestionnaire (100% response rate). There was an increased selfreportedknowledge and skills of faculty members. 70% of thefaculty agreed that they are able to get involved in designing theircourse learning objectives. 100% of the faculty were aware ofdifferent teaching methods, and 93% of them were implementingdifferent types of teaching methods, including small groupdiscussions, flipped classrooms, standardized patient-basedteaching, and problem-based learning. 100% of the faculty wereaware of different assessment methods and implementing them.There were self-reported and observed behavioral changes.Conclusions: Faculty development activities at Avalon UniversitySchool of Medicine have shown to be effective. At larger institutions,the department chair can lead the faculty development activities.

Keywords

• faculty
• biomedical
• educators
• medical education