Understanding Educational Needs for Teaching Clinicians Using a Mixed Methods Approach
Abstract
Introduction:
Developing impactful faculty development education for busy clinicians is challenging. Medical education literature is expanding exponentially while at the same time, clinical responsibilities and administrative tasks cause enormous time demands for clinical faculty and residents. These time demands limit participation in traditional learning experiences and in assessments of educational effectiveness. Understanding faculty and resident needs for assessing and improving their skills as educators and their preferences for how to receive that information is crucial for creating faculty development education that is useful for busy clinicians.
Methods:
A convergent mixed methods design was used. Eastern Virginia Medical School Department of Pediatrics faculty and pediatric residents were recruited and interviewed virtually or in person using a semi-structured interview format. Thematic analysis was used to analyze interview responses. Faculty and residents were surveyed on faculty development topics and ways of receiving information using a 5- point Likert scale. Survey responses were entered without identifiers and analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results:
A total of 40 faculty members out of the 225 invited to participate were interviewed (17.8% response rate) along with 2 residents. 37 faculty surveys and 2 resident surveys were recorded. Improving feedback to learners, how to assess learners' clinical skills, and how to assess for implicit bias were marked as high need or very high need by 84.6% (n=33), 57.9% (n=22), and 53.8% (n=21) of survey responses, respectively. Brief pearls and short videos were marked as quite useful or most useful by 76.9% (n=30) and 55.3% (n=21) of responses, respectively. Thematic analysis revealed three themes:(1) creating a sustainable educational environment, (2) the importance of quality in the educational content, and (3) challenges to implementing faculty development.
Conclusion:
Interviews revealed that faculty members largely wish to participate in faculty development activities. However, faculty development education must be given out in short, high- quality ways to increase participation. Survey data confirmed this finding as brief distribution methods were the most popular. Future faculty development education in this department needs to be high- quality, brief, and focused on improving feedback to learners, assessing learners' clinical skills, and assessing for implicit bias.