Exploring faculty development opportunities and strategies in departments of medicine of U.S. community-based teaching hospitals

Background: Faculty development (FD) activities are offered as a tool to health-care professionals to improve their knowledge, skills, and role as teachers and educators, leaders, researchers, and scholars. Formal FD activities have been more readily available at university-based teaching hospitals than at community-based hospitals. Yet the majority of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited residency programs are sponsored by community-based teaching hospitals. Methods: An electronic survey along with the cover letter/consent form were sent via email to members of the Association of Program Directors of Internal Medicine (APDIM) of Community-Based Teaching Hospitals Assembly. Two researchers analyzed responses and reviewed all answers independently. Consensus was reached by comparison and discussion. Results: A total of 75 program or associate program directors from 53 U.S. Community-Based Teaching Hospitals with internal medicine residency programs participated in the survey. Eleven percent of the respondents reported that they had no faculty development activities in their departments, 44% reported occasional activities, and 45% reported ongoing activities. Forty-three percent reported making arrangements for faculty to attend FD offsite. However, 78% sent less than five people to those programs in the past 2 years. Discussion: The results of this study suggest that for the academic year 2014–2015 still a minority of non-university-based teaching hospitals had ongoing faculty development activities associated with their institution. Increased program commitment and adequate resources for FD instructors and funding can produce the desired increase in the number as well as the quality of the FD programs.