Sarasota Regional Medical School Campus
Faculty Development Research Pilot Project

Overview

History

What began as a vision in spring 2006 soon produced a systematic process of determining the local needs in faculty development for community teaching physicians. With funding from Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation for the “Faculty Development Research Pilot Project” a collaborative development of research, ideas, and goals set the stage for an innovative approach to faculty development advancement at the Sarasota Regional Campus of Florida State University College of Medicine (See the Logic Model [pdf]).

Collaboration

The project, in research partnership with the University of South Florida, College of Education, Department of Educational Measurement and Research and doctoral work, is a solid, innovative approach to research design [pdf] through the incorporation of a Social Marketing framework.

Planning

Initial planning in Fall 2006 included stakeholder meetings and focus groups with key community leaders, teaching faculty, medical students, patients, practice managers, and campus staff (See the Mid Year Report [pdf]). This led the way for a scientific process in educational research including survey design and distribution in Spring 2007. Foremost, our local community as consumers and benefactors are the building blocks of the project.

Pre-Testing Results

The purpose of the survey pre-testing was to identify and evaluate problems with question design for the main faculty and student surveys prior to distribution. Two pre-testing stages, cognitive interviewing and field-testing, were conducted in June and July of 2007 (2/3 through the project) and provided important feedback and validity to the project’s survey design process. Final Pre-Test Summary Report [pdf]

Project Results

The project and final report were completed November 16, 2007. Findings suggest an approach to faculty development program development can be built by using the consumer to identify critical training needs. Feedback from the qualitative and quantitative assessments broadly identified humanism, professionalism, evaluation, expectations, feedback, clinical reasoning skills, and Evidence-Based Medicine as areas to target for future instructional and learning strategy development.

Further, the project was an important step in medical school faculty development advancement through a research based community driven needs assessment process. With the increasing shift in clinical training taking place in the ambulatory setting, the study identified areas for enhancement of training opportunities of community-based teaching physicians and learning environments for medical students, and ultimately promoting the enhancement of quality health care in the community. Other important considerations include furthering the goal of collegial, social service, government, and private partnerships within local communities. Final Project Report [pdf]
 

Scholarly Activity

The pilot project was accepted for presentation at the November 2007 Association of American Medical Colleges Generalists Meeting in Washington, DC and submitted for presentation at the March 2008 American Educational Research Association conference in New York City. In addition, the project is being prepared for journal publication.

Benefits

Our community benefits from this process as teaching physicians incorporate quality teaching methodologies into their practice, their students receive exemplary training, mentoring relationships are established, and our medical school produces competent graduates who have the skills to provide healthcare in a new era of medicine.