Implementation and Evaluation of a Faculty Development Program; an Essential Step for Curricular Change

Abstract

Introduction: Faculty Development Program (FDP) is principally vital in adapting staff members to their changing roles in medical education. The research objectives were to design, implement and evaluate FDP to help basic sciences staff members to develop the competencies necessary to adopt new curricular changes based on their needs assessment. Subjects and Methods: A quasi experimental, pre/post-design was applied. It passed through three stages; firstly, the planning and design stage where needs assessment survey was conducted to identify priority themes to be targeted. Also, we used “Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI)” to identify participants’ perceptions, knowledge and beliefs about teaching. Secondly, implementation stage a quasi-experimental pre/post-program design was used to execute the Faculty Development Program activities. Thirdly, the Evaluation stage, Kirkpatrick’s model of evaluating educational outcomes was used. A convenience sample of 137 staff members was drawn from integrated preclerkship basic medical sciences. Results: The Approaches to Teaching Inventory revealed that staff uses Information Transfer/Teacher Focused Approach. Staff suggested National Academic Reference Standards “NARS 2017”, Competency-based medical education and Integrated basic sciences teaching and assessment for training. The overall satisfaction for all workshops ranged from 4.2 to 4.5 which indicate high satisfaction. Also, there was a significant improvement of post-test scores from their baseline scores in all workshops (p < 0.001). At baseline (pre-test) mean scores ranged from 4.77 ± 2.49 to 6.57 ± 1.97, whereas post-test mean scores ranged from 9.55 ± 1.92 to 12.08 ± 1.94. Conclusion: We concluded that the FDP is a crucial step for any curricular change. The FDP led to positive changes in the participants’ attitudes towards an innovative medical education and increased their knowledge about integrated teaching/learning and assessment methods. The participants emphasized the high demand for a more student-centered, problem-based, integrated medical education curriculum.