Faculty development in medical education, with implications for continuing medical education

Abstract

This review of faculty development (FD) in medical education calls attention to the challenges facing both FD and continuing medical education (CME) in the hope that the two fields can work together to better meet those challenges. FD and CME have, for the most part, developed independently of each other, despite having much in common. The two fields can be expected to have still more in common as more nonacademic physicians (particularly those in primary care) answer the increasing call to teach medical students in ambulatory settings, and as more academic physicians spend increasingly more time in (and bring in more income from) clinical practice. The authors' knowledge and experience lie in FD, and we invite readers with CME backgrounds to interpret what we say about FD in light of their knowledge and experience. We believe that the current challenges to FD and the recommendations we make are also relevant to CME, and that FD and CME professionals can both increase their impact by working more closely together to develop better strategies for designing, implementing, and evaluating our programs. We begin by defining FD in medical education and discuss the domains (or academic roles) commonly addressed and the educational formats commonly used in FD programs. We cite references to the literature on a variety of programs. We conclude this section with two sets of recommendations for FD from the literature. In the next section, we begin to look at the next challenges for FD, given the current environment in which academic medicine finds itself. We raise questions and make recommendations toward meeting the new challenges for FD and CME.