Designing Prefaculty Competencies for Diverse Learners Through a Modified Delphi Process

Faculty diversity in academic medicine may better prepare the next generation of equity-minded health care practitioners and leaders. Prefaculty development is an emerging concept to support trainees in achieving key knowledge, skills, and experiences to become successful faculty.

To outline competencies, with corresponding milestones, to support the academic career development of learners, inclusive of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities minoritized in medicine.

Using a modified Delphi process, a national working group consisting of 13 members was established. The group used the published literature and listening sessions with diverse stakeholders to draft a set of competencies and milestones in July 2022. Diverse expert panelists reviewed the draft set over 2 rounds between September 2022 and January 2023. The group considered qualitative data to further refine the draft set between rounds. Consensus was reached when competencies and milestones were rated as agree or strongly agree on importance or appropriateness by 75% or greater of expert panelists after the second round. A final set of competencies and milestones was generated in February 2023. Data from round 1 were analyzed in October 2022 and data from round 2 were analyzed in January 2023.

The development of prefaculty competencies with corresponding milestones by expert panel rankings and comments.

The national working group consisted of 13 members who represented diversity across racial, ethnic, and gender identities and academic and career tracks. The working group developed an initial set of 36 competencies and corresponding milestones across 12 domains. After 2 rounds, consensus among 46 expert panelists generated a final list of 32 competencies with corresponding milestones across 11 domains. A total of 26 panelists (56.5%) were women, 11 (23.9%) were Black or African American, 17 (37.0%) were Latina/o/x/e, Hispanic, or of Spanish origin, and 10 (21.7%) were White. Competency domains were divided into 2 groups: foundational (academic career choice and professional identity, mentorship, networking, financial skills, diversity and inclusion, personal effectiveness and self-efficacy, and leadership) and focused (education, community engagement, research, and clinical medicine). Consensus for inclusion or elimination of items was greater than 90% between the 2 rounds.

There was consensus among the working group and expert panelists regarding the importance and appropriateness of the competencies and milestones for diverse trainees to successfully obtain faculty positions. Institutions and national organizations can use these competencies as a framework to develop curricula that support diverse learners' career development toward academia.