development of a cadre of Clinician Educators.
Clinician Educators are clinicians with formal medical education training who provide consultative expertise to clinician teachers and curriculum and residency directors and who produce scholarship around educational themes.14 The development of a Royal College Clinician Educator Area of Focused Competence (AFC) would provide a rigorous, recognizable certification in medical education for interested physicians and could potentially support a train-the-trainer model of dissemination in medical education theory and skill. The process used to develop this diploma should not inhibit the development of high-quality programs by other institutions. In fact, collaboration among other education organizations/bodies should be encouraged to ensure the realization of an effective pan-Canadian strategy.
Particularly with the impending transition toward a competency-based education approach, all residency training programs should endeavour to have at least one Clinician Educator per program.15 In the interim, faculties of medicine should coordinate the resources of existing Clinician Educators, such that all programs have access to skilled resources.
Similar diplomas in fields such as health administration and leadership would be complementary to the PGME needs served by a Clinician Educator AFC.
The Royal College should expand the scope, variety and number of education fellowships (i.e., monetary awards) to support physicians engaged in education training. Additionally, such fellowships would strengthen the academic credibility of medical education training within universities. The Royal College should actively influence the academic medical culture to achieve parity of recognition between medical education and traditional research.
ConCLuSIonS
To meet the changing needs of PGME, this policy paper proposes a re-conceptualization of professional development that directly incorporates faculty development. All physicians in-practice should be required to participate in professional development initiatives as defined by the CanMEDS/CanMEDS-FM framework, including participation in initiatives broadly defined as faculty development. Improving the abilities of physicians in education-related competencies will enable the proposals stemming from other papers in this e-book.
reFerenCeS
1. Frank JR, ed. 2005. The CanMEDS 2005 Physician Competency Framework. Better standards. Better physicians. Better Care. Ottawa: The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
2. Cruess RL, Cruess SR. 2008. Expectations and obligations: professionalism and medicine’s social contract with society. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 51 (4): 579-98.
3. Sheets KJ, Schwenk TL. 1990. Faculty development for family medicine educators: An agenda for future activities. Teaching and Learning in Medicine. 2 (3): 141-8.
4. Knight AM, Caresse JA, Wright SM. 2007. Qualitative assessment of the long-term impact of a faculty development programme in teaching skills. Medical Education. 41 (6): 592-600.
5. Steinert Y, Mann K, Centeno A, Dolmans D, Spencer J, Gelula M, Prideaux D. 2006. A Systematic Review of Faculty Development Initiatives Designed to Improve Teaching Effectiveness in Medical Education: BEME Guide No. 8. Medical Teacher. 28 (6): 497-526. 6. Steinert Y. 2011. Commentary: Faculty Development: The Road Less Traveled. Academic Medicine. 86 (4): 409-11.
7. Frankel RM, Eddins-Folensbee F, Inui TS. 2011. Crossing the Patient-Centered Divide: Transforming Health Care Through Enhanced Faculty Development. Academic Medicine. 86 (4): 445-52.
8. Mcleod PJ, Steinert Y. 2010. The evolution of faculty development in Canada since the 1980s: coming of age or time for a change?
Medical Teacher.32 (1): e31-5.
9. Steinert Y, Naismith L, Mann K. 2012. Faculty development initiatives designed to promote leadership in medical education. A BEME systematic review: BEME Guide No. 19. Medical Teacher. 34 (6): 483-503.
10. Chou S, Cole G, McLaughlin K, Lockyer J. 2008. CanMEDS evaluation in Canadian postgraduate training programmes: tools used and programme director satisfaction. Medical Education. 42 (9): 879-86.
11. Frank JR, Abbott C, Bourgeois G, Hyde S, Lee AC. 2010. Royal College Abstracts for the ICRE 2010: Adoption of the CanMEDS competency framework in residency education 2001-2009. Open Medicine. 4 (3Suppl): s1-86.
12. Communication in 2012 with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Office of Professional Affairs.
13. Sherbino J, Frank J, Flynn L, Snell L. 2011. “Intrinsic Roles” rather than “armour”: renaming the “non-medical expert roles” of the CanMEDS Framework to match their intent. Advances in Health Sciences Education. 16 (5): 695-7.
14. Sherbino J, Snell L, Dath D, Dojeiji S, Abbott C, Frank JR. 2010. A national educator program: a model of an effective community of practice. Medical Educator Online. 15.
15. Dath D, Iost W. 2010. The importance of faculty development in the transition to competency-based medical education.
SuGGeSteD reADInGS
Hatem CJ, Lown BA, Newman LR. 2009. Strategies for creating a faculty fellowship in medical education: report of a 10-year experience.
Academic Medicine. 84 (8): 1098–1103.
An in-depth look at both the curricular content and process of three well-established, year-long medical education fellowships in which single cohorts of medical teaching faculty participate in extended faculty development activities. This paper provides a useful starting point for those who develop and conduct educational faculty development activities in medical schools and academic medical centres.
McLean M, Cilliers F, Van Wyk JM. 2008 Faculty development: yesterday, today and tomorrow. Medical Teacher. 30 (6): 555-84.
This paper offers a new definition of faculty development that aligns with the personal and professional development of teachers, clinicians, researchers and administrators to meet the goals, vision and mission of their institution in terms of its social and moral responsibility to the community it serves.
Steinert Y, Mann K, Centeno A, Dolmans D, Spencer J, Gelula M, Prideaux D. 2006. A Systematic review of faculty development initiatives designed to improve teaching effectiveness in medical education: BEME Guide No. 8. Medical Teacher.28 (6): 497-526.
This systematic review of the faculty development literature describes the qualities of effective faculty development, including the use of experiential learning, provision of feedback, effective peer and colleague relationships, well-designed interventions following principles of teaching and learning, and the use of a diversity of educational methods within single interventions.
Steinert Y. 2011. Faculty Development for Postgraduate Education – The Road Ahead. Part of The Future of Medical Education in Canada Postgraduate Project. Last retrieved March 23, 2013 from the AFMC website:
http://www.afmc.ca/pdf/fmec/21_Steinert_Faculty%20Development.pdf.
In this discussion paper linked to the AFMC Future of Medical Education-Postgraduate project, the author asserts that faculty development plays a critical role not only in the development of teaching and learning, but also in the promotion of change and innovation and the enhancement of organizational capacities, and that this is essential in PGME. For faculty development to be effective, it should address both individual and organizational needs and be integrated into the local context. It should also be grounded in a theoretical framework and build on best practices in the field.
Authors
Jocelyn Lockyer, MHA, PhD Ivan Silver, MD, MEd, FRCPC Anna Oswald, MD, MMEd, FRCPC Graham Bullock, MD, FRCPC Craig Campbell, MD, FRCPC Jason R. Frank, MD, MA(Ed), FRCPC Sarah Taber, MHA/MGSS
Jim Wilson, MD, FRCSC Kenneth A. Harris, MD, FRCSC
The authors acknowledge Jonathan Sherbino, FRCPC, McMaster University, for his thoughtful contributions to this manuscript.