A Robust Faculty Development Program for Medical Educators: A Decade of Experience

Faculty development programs (FDPs) foster learning communities and enhance professional identity formation for medical educators. Competency-based frameworks for faculty development drive skill development across clinical practice, teaching, and scholarship domains. The aims of this study are to outline the context, content, and evolution of a novel FDP; map the individual conferences that make up the FDP to established faculty development competencies; identify steps to implement similar programming; and demonstrate outcomes to date.

The FDP consists of four, 1-hour-long conferences held weekly on a rotating basis since 2007 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine: Academy of Master Educators, Medical Education Research, Medical Education Journal Club, and Medical Education Research Methods and Innovative Design conference. Authors outline the relation of each of these four conferences to faculty development competencies and describe early outcomes for each conference over four consecutive academic years from 2014 to 2018. Participants include attendees and presenters in four consecutive academic years from 2014 to 2018.

The well-attended FDP meets all established competencies for educator faculty. Presenters and attendees were diverse in terms of academic rank and represented a breadth of clinical and basic science specialties.

This integrated FDP fosters a community of medical educators and develops faculty skills across established medical educator competencies.