Faculty perceptions about roles and functions of a department of medical education

To determine faculty's perceptions and expectations from Department of Medical Education (DME).

Mixed methods study (sequential exploratory design).

University Medical and Dental College (UMDC) and Punjab Medical College (PMC), Faisalabad, from March to May 2011.

Faculty members teaching at PMC and UMDC were enrolled for semi-structured interviews with four senior faculty members (non-probability purposive sampling) in the qualitative phase to get in-depth information. After content analysis, themes were generated and a questionnaire with closed ended items was developed to validate the findings of the qualitative phase. In the quantitative phase, a cross-sectional survey was conducted using this questionnaire. It was sent to all 250 working faculty members, out of whom 149 (60%) responded. The results of this survey were analyzed by descriptive analysis using SPSS version 17. The analyses of qualitative and quantitative phases were integrated in the final interpretation phase to draw a conclusion.

In faculty members' opinion, functions of DME were faculty development (83%), interdepartmental collaboration (81%), research (77%), curriculum development (66%), career counselling (62%) and faculty evaluation (60%). Development of DME was considered a positive change by 119 (80%) respondents.

Majority of the faculty members working in UMDC and PMC, Faisalabad considered DME a positive change.