Pilot test of family medicine faculty development fellowship accreditationguidelines

dBackground: We conducted a pilot test of accreditation guidelines for fami ly medicine faculty development fellowship programs from September 1997 to March 1999. The accreditation guidelines included 8 application categories with 27 requirements and 5 self-study criteria. The process included comple tion of the accreditation application and self-study and a site visit. We s elected 6 sites for participation in the pilot test, and 5 sites completed all steps. The results indicated that, while fellowship faculty felt that t he requirements and criteria were valid for determining quality of faculty development fellowship programs, the process was rime-consuming and could b e shortened. Redundancy between information supplied on the application and on the self-study was also noted Six recommendations were included in the final report, including streamlining the accreditation process, developing guidelines for probationary status, and considering alternatives to accredi tation, such as peer review.