The long-term impact of an interprofessional humanistic faculty development programme: A qualitative investigation

While it has long been supported that faculty development programmes serve as a means to improving practical knowledge, professional skills, and identity formation for faculty, significantly less research is focused on how learning that occurs in faculty development programmes is actually employed in the workplace and ingrained in day-to-day activities. The present study qualitatively explored the long-term impact of the Mentoring and Professionalism in Training (MAP-IT) programme, a longitudinal, interprofessional faculty development curriculum designed to enhance clinicians' humanistic mentoring skills, specifically nurses and physicians.

Participants included 21 former high-potential mentors and facilitator leaders who had graduated from the MAP-IT programme from 2014 to 2016. Semi-structured focus groups and interviews were conducted between August and September of 2017 to collect participant experiences of the impact of MAP-IT skills on their professional roles (with colleagues and patients) in their clinical environments. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis methodology.

Qualitative analyses using an editing analysis style resulted in nine major themes, including incorporation into clinical practice, self-care, team building and conflict resolution, mindfulness, mentorship, professionalism, interprofessional collaboration, humanism, and appreciative inquiry.

The personal and professional development instilled through the MAP-IT programme was found to remain important over time, years after participation in the programme had concluded, supporting its "durability." Implications are also discussed.