Faculty development in health professions education: exploring need assessment, challenges, and opportunities in...

Faculty development (FD) is essential for strengthening health professions education, yet context specific evidence from emerging medical schools in lower- and middle-income settings remains limited. This study aimed to identify faculty development needs, perceived barriers, and preferred delivery formats at the College of Health Sciences, VinUniversity, with the goal of informing contextually appropriate program design.

A descriptive cross-sectional needs assessment was conducted using an electronic survey that addressed faculty development needs in teaching, research, and leadership; perceived barriers to accessing development initiatives; and preferred formats for organizing training programs.

From 350 faculty members invited, 121 participated (response rate: 34.6%), representing a diverse range of disciplines. Across all domains, faculty rated most development topics as important or very important, with the highest mean scores observed for teaching evidence-based medicine, clinical teaching and supervision, assessment design, research methodology and international research collaboration. The study also identified significant barriers to FD such as time constraints (80%), language challenges in English-delivered programs (31%), and high program costs (36%). Despite these barriers, there was a notable preference for interactive training formats, with workshops and seminars (76%), and hands-on training (75%) being the most favored. Notably, 76% of respondents were willing to serve as trainers, indicating promising potential for peer-led FD initiatives. Qualitative analysis highlighted four themes: the need to prioritize clinical and adjunct faculty, the impact of workload and limited institutional support, demand for structured pedagogical and research training with international linkages, and the importance of linguistically and culturally adapted programs.

This study identifies convergent faculty development priorities, barriers, and preferred strategies in a Vietnamese health professions context. The findings point to the value of flexible, affordable, and bilingual initiatives that emphasize core teaching, research, and leadership skills, explicitly target clinical and adjunct faculty, and make use of interactive and peer led formats. Multi institutional and longitudinal studies are warranted to examine how such programs can be implemented and to assess their impact on faculty practice and educational outcomes in similar settings.