Individualized Faculty Development to Address Outpatient Teaching Challenges: A Mixed-Methods Study

Outpatient faculty face persistent workplace teaching challenges such as high patient volume and limited visit time. Traditional faculty development rarely provides individualized strategies for improving teaching in the clinical workplace.

To implement an individualized faculty development program that uses coaching to help faculty identify an outpatient teaching challenge and develop a feasible solution.

A large academic medical center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Twenty-four outpatient teaching faculty from six departments completed the program between September 2021 and May 2022.

Faculty participated in a 60-min individualized coaching session. Participants reflected on their outpatient teaching and clinic workflow, identified a priority teaching challenge, and designed a small, feasible solution (a "micro-innovation"). The program emphasized faculty-created workplace-specific solutions.

Evaluation included a 6-month survey (75% response, 18/24), a 9-month focus group, and a 3-year follow-up survey (75% response, 15/20). At 6 months, all respondents (18/18) reported implementing their micro-innovation and perceived a positive impact on student clinics. At 3 years, 53% of respondents (8/15) continued using their micro-innovation. Faculty valued the individualized format for its relevance to their clinic context.

An individualized coaching program can support outpatient educators in addressing teaching challenges through small, sustainable changes.