Clinical teaching improvement: past and future for faculty development.

Faculty development programs have focused on the improvement of clinical teaching for several decades, resulting in a wide variety of programs for clinical teachers. With the current constraints on medical education, faculty developers must reexamine prior work and decide on future directions. This article discusses 1) the rationale for providing faculty development for clinical teachers, 2) the competencies needed by clinical teachers, 3) the available programs to assist faculty to master those competencies, and 4) the evaluation methods that have been used to assess these programs. Given this background, we discuss possible future directions to advance the field.

Outcomes of three part-time faculty development fellowship programs.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Part-time faculty development fellowship programs have trained large numbers of new physician faculty for family medicine education programs. This study reviews data from three part-time fellowship programs to determine how well the programs train new faculty and the academic success of fellowship graduates. METHODS: Part-time fellowship programs at Michigan State University, the University of North Carolina, and the Faculty Development Center in Waco, Tex, sent written surveys to graduates as part of routine follow-up studies. Graduates were asked to report their current status in academic medicine, how they spend their time, measures of academic productivity, and assessments of how well their training prepared them for their current academic positions. Data were complied at each institution and sent to Michigan State University for analysis. RESULTS: The majority of graduates (76%) have remained in their academic positions, and half (49%) teach in medically underserved settings. Graduates report high levels of satisfaction with the training they received. Thirty-two percent of graduates have published peer-reviewed articles, and almost 50% have presented at peer-reviewed meetings. CONCLUSIONS: Part-time fellowship programs have been successful at training and retaining large numbers of new faculty for family medicine.

Outcomes of the first Family Practice Chief Resident Leadership Conference.

In June 1989 the first Family Practice Chief Resident Leadership Conference was presented to 27 Texas second-year residents who had been selected to serve as chief residents during their third year. The objectives of the conference were to assist these emerging leaders to develop better stress management and leadership skills and to strengthen their ties with the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. The conference featured two major workshops on stress management and leadership skills, and included plenary speeches and large and small group discussions. This article reports the outcomes of the conference as measured by the evaluation instrument completed by participants. Analysis of the results indicated that the conference had a positive effect on the residents.

Affective changes in faculty development fellows in family medicine.

The authors investigated the perceptions of 20 faculty development fellows in family medicine to determine whether they were more comfortable in clinical teaching roles after completing a fellowship. The fellows were asked to rate themselves and the ideal clinical teacher at the beginning and end of the fellowship. Comparisons of the fellows' pretest and posttest results were made on each of three factors (authority, sensitivity, and capability) that had been identified as characteristic of the ideal clinical teacher in family medicine. The results of the ratings indicated that the fellows changed their perceptions of themselves as clinical teachers substantially on two of the factors during the fellowship. In addition, on the posttest the fellows' perceptions of themselves matched their own profiles of ideal clinical teachers and on two of the factors matched the profile of an ideal clinical teacher of a sample of 215 clinical teachers in family medicine.