Eligible Faculty Research Articles

Program-Centered Education: A New Model for Faculty Development

Background: We describe a program-focused faculty development model that has been implemented across 7 family medicine residency programs. Description: The South Carolina Faculty Development Initiative (SCFDI) targets residency program faculty as a group. The SCFDI assesses training needs of the target faculty through the use of qualitative and quantitative information obtained from faculty, residents, and staff of each residency. Internal comparisons of faculty, resident and staff views, coupled with comparisons across residencies, are used to develop each program's curriculum. A longitudinal series of faculty development workshops is conducted at the program's facility, with all faculty participating simultaneously. Evaluation: The 34 workshops presented involved 90% of the eligible faculty. Attendees ranked presentations highly for quality, scholarship, applicability to faculty role, as well as usefulness to themselves and their program. Conclusions: A program-specific model of faculty development, with instruction provided on-site, is both feasible and acceptable to family medicine faculty. This model, which focuses on the needs of a faculty group rather than those of individual faculty members, may be more affordable and effective for a larger number of faculty than more traditional fellowship models.

Library and Information Science Faculty: Their Lives as Scholars

Reported are the findings of a 1988-89 study of full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty in U.S. programs accredited by the American Library Association. The 331 respondents made up over 69 percent of all eligible faculty. The study, funded by the Council on Library Resources, attempted to replicate the American Council of Learned Societies' (ACLS) 1985 Survey of Scholars in seven social sciences and humanities disciplines and to assemble data for comparison. This article focuses on what was learned about faculty members' collegial research relationships, publishing experiences, professional association activities, attitudes toward the scholarly and professional literatures of their field, computer skills and uses, and overall job satisfaction. The study's central thesis was that library school faculty members, as people identified with a profession and deeply involved in problems of practice, would show weaker records as academicians and scholars than the ACLS respondents, excepting only their skills ...

Sabbatical

<i>SABBATICAL</i>is derived from the Hebrew word<i>sabat</i>, meaning rest, and is defined as "a plan for providing... an opportunity for self-improvement through a leave of absence with full or partial compensation, following a designated number of years of consecutive service." Sabbatical leave is a tradition in academia dating to the 1880's.¹Providing a variety of dividends to educator and institution, a sabbatical offers the opportunities to be among colleagues in other educational environments, to concentrate on an area of interest without distraction, to learn new educational and clinical techniques, and to achieve intellectual and professional renewal.^2-4 Given the many positive aspects of a sabbatical, it is surprising how few faculty take advantage of this opportunity. A recent survey⁵of 19 medical schools revealed that the proportions of their faculty that took sabbaticals within one year of eligibility ranged from 2% to 16%. Of those eligible faculty who

Faculty members' evaluations of sabbaticals.

Seventy medical school faculty members at seven institutions who had taken a sabbatical leave were interviewed about their sabbatical experiences, and 15 who were eligible but had not taken a sabbatical were asked their reasons for abstaining. Nineteen of 35 medical schools solicited also provided information about sabbaticals. The sabbatical experience was viewed very favorably by 80 percent of the participants; and three out of four were judged by the authors of the present paper as having accomplished something substantial, such as writing research papers or books or reorganizing teaching programs, following the sabbaticals. Presabbatical planning was emphasized by the respondents as the key to a satisfying sabbatical. Postsabbatical depression was common but not severe. At the 19 responding schools, sabbaticals were taken by an average of less than one-sixth of the eligible faculty members. Faculty members who had not taken sabbaticals gave a variety of reasons for the modest level of participation. Responses of the faculty members who had taken sabbaticals indicated that most medical school administrations did not capitalize on the opportunity to make the results of sabbaticals of maximum value to their institutions.

Primary Health Care

A full-time faculty in one dependent of medicine, 66 (85%) of whom are subspecialists, were surveyed to determine standards for provision and attitudes toward the teaching and practice of primary health care (PHC). A 40-item questionnaire on specific attributes of PHC provision was given to 70 eligible faculty members; 66 (94%) responded. Of 17 standards, nine were supported by 50 (75%) or more of the faculty and eight by from 24 (44%) to 48 (73%) faculty members. However, 51 faculty members (77%) indicated some discomfort with primary responsibility for the complete, ongoing care of their patients. Most frequent reasons for this discomfort were clinic inefficiency (31 votes [47%]) and competing commitments (29 votes [44%]). Few faculty indicated they did not enjoy PHC (eight [12%] of the faculty) or considered PHC inappropriate for academic physicians (ten [15%] of the faculty). These results indicate the complexity of faculty attitudes toward PHC and point to a need for departments of medicine to examine thier teaching and practice of PHC.

Primary health care: perspective of the faculty of a department of medicine

A full-time faculty in one dependent of medicine, 66 (85%) of whom are subspecialists, were surveyed to determine standards for provision and attitudes toward the teaching and practice of primary health care (PHC). A 40-item questionnaire on specific attributes of PHC provision was given to 70 eligible faculty members; 66 (94%) responded. Of 17 standards, nine were supported by 50 (75%) or more of the faculty and eight by from 24 (44%) to 48 (73%) faculty members. However, 51 faculty members (77%) indicated some discomfort with primary responsibility for the complete, ongoing care of their patients. Most frequent reasons for this discomfort were clinic inefficiency (31 votes [47%]) and competing commitments (29 votes [44%]). Few faculty indicated they did not enjoy PHC (eight [12%] of the faculty) or considered PHC inappropriate for academic physicians (ten [15%] of the faculty). These results indicate the complexity of faculty attitudes toward PHC and point to a need for departments of medicine to examine thier teaching and practice of PHC.

Clostridium difficile colitis associated with cancer chemotherapy

• All full-time faculty in one department of medicine, 66 (85%) of whom are subspecialists, were surveyed to determine standards for provision and attitudes toward the teaching and practice of primary health care (PHC). A 40-item questionnaire on specific attributes of PHC provision was given to 70 eligible faculty members; 66 (94%) responded. Of 17 standards, nine were supported by 50 (75%) or more of the faculty and eight by from 24 (44%) to 48 (73%) faculty members. However, 51 faculty members (77%) indicated some discomfort with primary responsibility for the complete, ongoing care of their patients. Most frequent reasons for this discomfort were clinic inefficiency (31 votes [47%]) and competing commitments (29 votes [44%]). Few faculty indicated they did not enjoy PHC (eight [12%] of the faculty) or considered PHC inappropriate for academic physicians (ten [15%] of the faculty). These results indicate the complexity of faculty attitudes toward PHC and point to a need for departments of medicine to examine their teaching and practice of PHC. (<i>Arch Intern Med</i>1982;142:325-329)