Faculty Learning Communities: A Collaborative Model for Professional Development of Medical Educators in our Multi-Campus System, 2019 to Present

Abstract

Background The Indiana University School of Medicine employs a large geographically distributed system of medical education composed of 8 regional medical campuses and the main medical campus in Indianapolis. Medical educators need targeted faculty development programs to give them the skills necessary to produce educational scholarship for promotion and tenure. An inherent challenge of operating such a large multi-campus system is being able to provide relevant professional development opportunities for all our medical educators across the state.

Objective To provide relevant professional development opportunities for all medical education faculty across our large multi-campus system statewide.

Methods Beginning the Fall of 2019, we implemented Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) specifically designed to develop faculty competence in medical education research. All medical school faculty across our statewide system were eligible to participate. Each FLC team consisted of 4-6 medical educators engaged in a collaborative educational research project led by an experienced faculty mentor. The FLC teams met monthly via Zoom over a 2-year term to establish priorities, share ideas, distribute the workload, and produce the scholarly product(s). In addition to the group work, participants were expected to attend a series of monthly webinars to build foundational skills in educational research.

Results To date, 63 medical educators (both preclinical/clinical) have participated in 13 FLC teams. To assess participant satisfaction, surveys were administered at the mid-point and at the end of each FLC team’s term (68% cumulative response rate). Averaged across all teams, a majority of respondents:  Rated their FLC experience as “Good” to “Excellent” (81%)  “Strongly agreed” or “agreed” that the FLC process met their professional development needs (73%)  Were interested in participating in future FLC teams (65%) By the end of their term, about one-half of the participants had submitted their work for publication or presentation.

Conclusion By participating in FLCs, medical educators from the regional campuses and main campus were able to effectively collaborate on projects of mutual interest. In our experience, FLCs provide a cost-effective and sustainable model for developing medical educators. Although lack of protected time may be an impediment for clinician participation, this can be partially mitigated by requiring the clinical chair’s approval before joining an FLC team.