LETTER TO EDITOR

Year : 2019  |  Volume : 5  |  Issue : 1  |  Page : 41-42

Faculty Development Programs in Medical Education: Need and Points to Ponder for Its Successful Organization

Saurabh RamBihariLal Shrivastava¹, Prateek Saurabh Shrivastava^2
1 Vice Principal Curriculum, Department of Community Medicine, Member of the Medical Education Unit & Institute Research Council, Shri Sathya Sai Medical College and Research Institute, Kancheepuram, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, India
² Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Shri Sathya Sai Medical College and Research Institute, Kancheepuram, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, India

Correspondence Address:
Dr. Saurabh RamBihariLal Shrivastava
Department of Community Medicine, Shri Sathya Sai Medical College & Research Institute, 3rd floor, Ammapettai Village, Thiruporur - Guduvancherry Main Road, Sembakkam Post, Kancheepuram, 603 108, Tamil Nadu
India

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

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DOI: 10.4103/mamcjms.mamcjms_9_19

Dear Editor,

Faculty Development Programs (FDPs) have been identified as an important link between the curricular delivery and the competence level of the undergraduate medical students.^[1] These programs are goal-linked processes with an aim to renew or aid the faculty member to fulfill their different roles.^[1] These play a big part in the curriculum design and implementation, adoption of new teaching–learning methods (like Problem-Oriented Learning, Objective Structured Clinical Examination, and others) and refinement of the teaching skills, streamlining of the students’ assessment by making faculty members understand how to draft different questions, and resorting to programmatic assessment.^[1],[2]

In addition, FDPs enhance the competence level of faculty members to perform educational research, which could be useful for their own professional growth and also beneficial for the undergraduate and postgraduate students.^[2],[3] Moreover, these expose the faculty members to different forms of audiovisual aids or e-learning, and all of which can be employed for the betterment of the delivery of curriculum.^[1],[2] Further, the faculty member can also aid in the program evaluation to explore the effectiveness of an existing teaching–learning method or a program, or a new innovation.^[2],[3],[4] Finally, these FDPs can also enhance the skills of giving feedback to students, communication skills, and leadership and managerial skills.^[1]

However, considering the scope and value of FDPs in improving the various domains of a faculty and medical education, it is of utmost importance to plan them systematically to eventually enhance their effectiveness.^[1],[2],[3] It has been realized that many of the FDPs fail to accomplish the intended objectives, and this is all because of the poor planning and not doing learner needs’ assessment prior to organizing these sessions. Under ideal circumstances, all the proposed FDPs should help in the professional development and acquisition of skills for the faculty and assist in the transformation of the faculty.^[3],[4]

The FDPs should be built upon the principles of experiential learning and aim to accomplish that even the faculty members become a self-directed learner.^[1],[2],[3] Each FDP session should have an optimal mixture of theory and practical sessions and there has to be a scope for more of a hands-on training. Further, in any of the organized FDPs, the participants have to be from different disciplines, and the session should act as a platform for them to interact on different issues and develop a network of faculty scholars. Moreover, to enhance the effectiveness of the session, the resource person or other participants should give feedback to each faculty, so that they can improve in their areas of weakness.^[1],[2]

In addition, these FDP sessions should employ a wide range of educational methods to meet the needs of different participants (one method might not suit all). Further, efforts should be made by the resource persons to encourage more interaction among the participants and aim toward attaining faculty ownership. At the same time, the facilitator should attempt to develop respect and trust with the faculty members.^[2],[3],[4] As one of the after measures (after the FDP), the faculty members can be requested to start and maintain a teaching portfolio and encouraged to act as a change agent and pass on the gained knowledge to the other colleagues of their departments.

In conclusion, the FDPs have immense potential to bring about reforms in the field of medical education. However, the success of these programs depends upon the clarity of the objectives and planning the session in alignment with the findings of the needs assessment.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.



 

References

1.	Srivastava TK, Waghmare LS, Rawekar A, Mishra VP. Fostering educational research among medical teachers: evaluation of a faculty development program in India. J Clin Diagn Res 2016;10:JC09-11.
2.	Moore P, Montero L, Triviño X, Sirhan M, Leiva L. Impact beyond the objectives: a qualitative study of a faculty development program in medical education. Rev Med Chil 2014;142:336-43.
3.	Zodpey S, Sharma A, Zahiruddin QS, Gaidhane A, Shrikhande S. Faculty development programs for medical teachers in India. J Adv Med Educ Prof 2016;4:97-101.
4.	Singh T. Project-based faculty development: Indian perspectives. Int J Appl Basic Med Res 2015;5:S1-2.

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