Faculty role expectation: perception discrepancies and departmental affiliation

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Healthcare Professional Roles
• Interprofessional Dynamics

Background:

• Understanding the congruence between expected and perceived roles is crucial for effective medical training.
• Discrepancies in role expectations between medical students and faculty can impact the learning environment and patient care.
• A validated instrument is needed to systematically assess these perceptions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a questionnaire assessing medical students' and faculty's role expectations and perceived role enactments.
• To identify key dimensions of role perception discrepancies between faculty and students.
• To compare faculty perceptions across different departments within a medical school.

Main Methods:

• Development of a questionnaire to measure role expectations and enactments.
• Cluster analysis of expectation-perception discrepancy scores for faculty respondents.
• Comparison of mean scores across nine identified dimensions for faculty from five medical school departments.

Main Results:

• Nine key dimensions emerged from faculty role perception analysis: Psychosocial Emphases, Ideal Student Role Enactment, Low Versus High Excellence, Faculty Considerateness to Patients, Division of Influence, Participation, Faculty Socioemotional Role Enactment, Student Appreciation, and Student Initiative.
• Significant differences in mean scores were found for faculty across six of these dimensions.
• Interdepartmental variations in faculty role perceptions were identified.

Conclusions:

• The developed questionnaire effectively captures critical dimensions of faculty and student role perceptions.
• Significant variations in faculty role perceptions exist across departments, suggesting a need for tailored interventions.
• Addressing these discrepancies is essential for optimizing medical education and fostering positive interprofessional relationships.