USE OF FACULTY-DEVELOPMENT TO IMPROVE AMBULATORY-CARE EDUCATION

Faculty and academic institutions face significant challenges in deliv ering effective ambulatory-care teaching to house staff and medical st udents. The effects of a faculty-development program on individual amb ulatory-care faculty's knowledge, skills, and attitudes; and on partic ipants' recommendations for improving the ambulatory-care environment were examined. The faculty development program trained faculty in eith er clinical teaching (CT), medical decision making (MDM), or preventiv e medicine (PM). Ten facilitators implemented a faculty-development pr ogram for 64 ambulatory-care faculty. On a 5-point scale (1 = definite ly not, 5 = definitely yes), participants rated the usefulness of the seminars as 4.8 or gr eater. For the CT seminars, statistically signif icant pre-to post-intervention improvements were found for all seven c ategories of teaching skills covered (p < 0.001). For the MDM seminars , the participants' content knowledge increased from a pretest mean of 49% correct to a posttest mean of 70% correct (p = 0.01). Participant s formulated 45 recommendations for improving the ambulatory-care sett ing; approximately one-half of these recommendations had been implemen ted by the institutions 6 months after completion of the program. Facu lty-development programs improve the stills of individual faculty and may provide a method for generating recommendations to improve ambulat ory-care education and patient care at the institutional level.