UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

School of Medicine

Wichita, Kansas

Team Contact/Coordinator: Anne Walling, M.D.

E-mail: awalling@kumc.edu

Phone: 316/293-1854

Fax: 316/293-1853

Faculty Development Needs to Address at the Models That Work Conference

Analysis and prioritization of data from needs assessment Program evolution Evaluation of Activities and dissemination of outcomes

Background

The University of Kansas School of Medicine (KUMC), the only medical school in the state, operates though campuses in Kansas City and Wichita, plus affiliations with several hundred institutions, clinics, and private practices throughout the state. The school and affiliated programs serves approximately 700 medical students and over 750 residents in addition to fellows and other learners. Approximately 35% of the 650 paid faculty are tenured and an additional 15% are on academic tracks leading to tenure. Over 1200 community-based faculty members collaborate in KUMC educational programs, mostly on a volunteer basis.

KUMC faces significant challenges in ensuring that faculty in multiple environments meet their career objectives and aspirations. While curricular reform has provided increased opportunities for many, particularly in primary care, to enhance educational activities and related scholarship, it threatens to compromise clinical and/or non-educational research productivity for both community and campus based faculty members.

In February 1998, the new Executive Dean recognized the importance of faculty vitality in ensuring the KUMC achieved its ambitious objectives in education, research, and service by initiating the Office of Faculty Development (OFD) lead by a full-time Associate Dean with staff on both campuses and strong links to a new Medical Education Support Unit (MESU). The OFD strategic plan, based on the work of Bland and others, stresses the need to address organizational and political issues in addition to providing and evaluating diverse systems of faculty development for individuals and groups. This application has been coordinated through OFD on behalf of the six primary care departments on the two campuses with significant support from the two departments of Obstetrics/Gynecology, the single Department of Preventive Medicine, and Deans of Nursing and Allied Health. We believe the potential scope of the project, organizational structure, and "representativeness" of the school makes KUMC an optimal Pilot Site for faculty development

Preliminary Needs Assessment Plan

The OFD strategic plan was based on review of published and unpublished literature and needs assessment using multiple modalities. We continue to use faculty surveys, structured interview with opinion leaders, departmental forums and targeted surveys, focus groups, and advisory boards to gather insights and data on needs. We need expert mentoring to interpret the data gathered an evolve comprehensive, meaningful, efficient needs assessments that can continually guide program development and contribute to measurable outcomes in this large and complex institution. While seeking more sophisticated understandings, it is obvious that the principal faculty development needs are clustered around:

• developing and implementing personalized career plans, including regular review and documentation
• core skill-development opportunities in education, research, and administration
• programs for specific sub-groups of faculty, including programs co-sponsored with departments
• mentoring (multiple aspects)
• access to information on faculty development concepts, opportunities, experiences of other schools
• "political priority" issues such as advocacy for faculty development, investment, promotion and tenure criteria.

Particular issues are the needs of our large primary care faculty in a relatively traditional school, the increasing emphasis on community-based faculty, and the potential advantages and drawbacks of pursing even closer collaboration with other schools including KU School of Education. We are also anxious to take full advantage of the many KU resources, especially in computers, communications and interactive TeleVideo capacity. Becoming a Pilot site will be an important catalyst.

Addressing Faculty Development Needs

• A system of regular review of all faculty is currently being introduced. The system focuses on career development and incorporates a faculty development plan and use of OFD for resources and consultation by both departments and individuals.
• OFD and MESU are providing "Medical Education 101" - a core curriculum in educational skills this year and developing other programs to meet other needs in educational topics.
• Seminars on administrative and management skills are being planned.
• Systematic career development in research is being developed with the Senior Associate Dean for Research
• Programs fare being co-sponsored with 2-4 departments during this academic year
• Proposal for mentoring systems is in consultation with faculty governance and administration
• Resource centers and web-site planned. Newsletter is produced every two months.
• Publication assistance and "struggling writers group" are active.
• OFD is staffing task force on Promotion and Tenure Criteria Revision.
• Task Force on academic issues for community-based faculty is planned.
• Associate Dean is active in administrative and other groups.

In seeking to become a Pilot Site, we are looking for three principal inputs to act as catalysts in our faculty development programs.

1. Assistance in fully benefitting from our initial needs assessment and in establishing on-going effective and efficient systems to monitor needs and demands.

2. Mentoring from experts in faculty development to ensure KUMC programs are "state of the art" and the individuals responsible for faculty development have the necessary expertise and networks to serve the School.

3. Assistance in ensuring scholarship in faculty development activities.

Summary

A strong start has been made in wining the confidence of the faculty, initiating programs, and raising the priority of faculty development at KUMC. We have exceptional support from the Dean on both campuses, a nucleus of enthusiastic staff and key faculty members, and an operational structure. We need guidance and mentoring to evolve services that are academically rigorous as well as demonstrably effective in meeting the needs of faculty members and the institution. KUMC is typical of many large state-supported medical schools and building on our potential will produce models and data applicable to several institutions. We wish to contribute to scholarly work in faculty development as well as serving KUMC. The Pilot site initiative appears to offer a unique opportunity to benefit both KUMC and the national constituency.