Emergency Medicine Clinician Perspectives on Faculty Development in a Multisite Health System: A Needs Assessment

Faculty development (FD) programs provide faculty with knowledge and skills to succeed in their roles. There is limited data to guide FD in emergency medicine (EM), especially in hospital systems that include diverse sites. We sought to identify the needs and preferences of EM faculty within a hospital system with multiple sites.

This was a cross-sectional survey of EM faculty at 4 different sites (1 academic, 2 community, 1 rural) within a single healthcare system. Participants completed an online survey consisting of multiple choice, completion, and scale items that was piloted prior to use. We calculated descriptive statistics.

Eighty-five (75%) faculty participated, including 11 (13%) Professors, 14 (16%) Associate Professors, 44 (52%) Assistant Professors, 11 (13%) Instructors, 4 (5%) Adjunct faculty, and 1 (1%) Other. 51 (60%) were male. Faculty were willing to devote an average of 3 hours per month for FD. The mean optimal percentage of time for various FD domains was 36% to Clinical skills, 15% to Education skills, 18% to Scholarship skills, 17% to career development and promotion skills, and 15% to personal development and wellness skills. The topics with the most interest in each of these domains were high risk procedures, providing feedback, writing for publication, healthcare finance, and personal finance respectively. The greatest barriers to participation in FD activities were the timing of the activity and faculty workload with 72 (85%) of participants rating each of these barriers as moderate or significant. To promote engagement, 56 (66%) of participants supported ensuring FD activities are integrated into career goal discussions, 35 (41%) supported creating awards for FD achievements, and 34 (40%) supported linking FD to financial remuneration. Participants were not supportive of mandatory FD activities or annual FD requirements. Participants were most interested in participating in procedural skills sessions, simulation sessions, and group retreats with 39 (46%), 24 (28%), 23 (27%) reporting they would “definitely” participate respectively.

Participants in this study identified FD needs as well as motivators and barriers to participation. These findings can inform the development and refinement of faculty development programs in EM as well as serve as a model for FD needs assessments in multi-site healthcare systems.