Fostering engagement with accreditation: capitalizing on leaders' professional values

Fostering educational leaders' engagement with accreditation is important for the development of a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) culture in education programs, sustaining the quality of the education provided. Key to faculty engagement with academic demands is congruence between professional values and academic demands. To promote leaders' engagement with accreditation, accreditation practices need to align with leaders' values. There is currently no information on leaders' professional values and on accreditation practices they perceive as most engaging. This study fills this gap and illustrates congruence between leaders' professional values and accreditation practices. Appreciative inquiry, a strength-based evaluation approach focusing on what is going well in an organisation, was used to elicit perceptions from leaders of seven medical education programs (1 undergraduate, UGME, and 6 postgraduate, PGME) at one academic centre about the components of accreditation and of their professional role they find as most engaging and valuable. Two independent coders analyzed the content of interviews and focus group discussions using open, emergent coding, to identify themes and their associations. Twenty-eight (48%) of 59 invited leaders participated, 8 from UGME program (29% of total participants, 47% of UGME invitees), 20 from all 6 targeted PGME programs (71% of all participants, 48% of PGME invitees). Leaders value their role for the inherent intellectual stimulation, their contribution to learners' growth, their effecting of meaningful changes, and the collaboration with learners and colleagues. Accreditation practices congruent with these values include comprehensive program reviews, faculty collaboration, and provision of external feedback and validation. The value of accreditation resides mainly in the preparation of documents and the visit, rather than in specific accreditation standards. Accreditation practices not congruent with leaders' values and leading to their disengagement were also identified. Accreditation practices congruent with leaders' professional values should be emphasized in accreditation practices to promote engagement and foster programmatic CQI, whereas non-congruent practices should be revisited for their added value. These results corroborate findings from previous literature on academic faculty engagement. Our findings will hopefully guide the development of new accreditation organisations and inform reforms of existing accreditation systems to foster leaders' meaningful engagement with accreditation and programmatic CQI.