Enhancing faculty development

When students attend clinical attachments in diverse locations, a key challenge is in ensuring consistently good teaching over all areas. To meet this challenge, a faculty development intervention called TiMEtoTeach was created with the aim of reaching all involved in teaching medical students. The programme takes a holistic view of workplace (professional clinical attachments) learning with the recognition of all who are part of the student learning journey, including staff in clinical environments, charitable organisations, fellow students and the patients and carers. Considering these individuals who impact the learning journey as universal faculty, development opportunities relating to teaching should be available. In recognising this involvement, and tailoring opportunities to the types of interactions, such as providing effective feedback, promotes a rich and authentic learning experience for the student.

TiMEtoTeach is an outreach and engagement faculty development project. Development opportunities are available and accessible and caters for any level of educational engagement. The philosophy behind this approach is informed by community of practice theory.

Faculty development is carried out by working in partnership across the academic/clinical interface facilitating the wealth of diverse skills necessary for sustaining an excellent student experience. Key stakeholders in educational delivery provide training, material, and resources to enable skills development. Champions of clinical teaching are identified to facilitate development sessions to share good practice.

Using a design thinking approach to develop a programme of support, insights are gathered from stakeholders involved in the educational programmes to identify emerging needs and trends. In this way, effective and accessible opportunities can be developed for universal faculty.

Current provision facilitates open and collegiate opportunities for development of educational practice, leadership and scholarship. Spanning from informal conversations hosted synchronously online, to face to face events held on site, with various eLearning approaches, and formal Continuing Professional Development courses, opportunities encompass the medical education community through a comprehensive longitudinal structure. 

Dennis, C. A., & Davies, N. (2021). Twelve tips for promoting consistent, good quality medical education across diverse clinical settings through faculty development approaches. Medical Teacher, 43(11), 1255-1260.

Davies, N., Anakin, M. & Dennis, C.A.  (2021) “TiMEtoTeach”: An approach to recognise and develop ‘universal faculty’ as teachers of undergraduate medical students. Medical Teacher, 43:8, 906-907