Criteria for Excellence | Chapter 3: Professional Development​​​​

A Program of Excellence recognizes that the people who work in the program and the practice are the program’s most important assets and therefore makes professional development one of its highest priorities. Professional development has three major realms: educational, clinical, and administrative. Recognizing the burnout epidemic amongst health care professionals, a fourth realm of professional development, well-being, is the focus of Chapter 4: Resident and Faculty Well-Being.

Faculty development for effective residency education

Educational: Traditionally, it has been assumed that if someone is a “good clinician” then the person will be a “good teacher.” This is not always the case, especially as core competencies for faculty educators expands beyond the traditional clinical, research, and didactic domains to include areas called out by the new ACGME Common Program Requirements (e.g., patient safety, quality improvement, population health, health care disparities, well-being, scholarly activity). Expanded, yet specific definitions of scholarly activity provide guidance for programs in the realm of faculty development.

Creativity, innovation, transformation, change management, and leadership require skill sets, even new mindsets, which were not expected of the prior generations of faculty. Residency education can benefit from new knowledge generated in the fields of the science of classroom teaching, cognitive psychology, and brain research. Examples of these opportunities include direct observation, bedside rounds, simulation, and supervision of procedures.

Active learning and direct observation in residency education

Direct observation is strongly emphasized in the Next Accreditation System (NAS) and is necessary to assess multiple Milestone achievement levels. Excellent teachers understand that passive learning methods (e.g., lectures and readings) have long-term retention rates in the range of 5-10%, compared with active teaching learning methods (e.g., discussion groups, practice by doing, teaching others, problem-based learning [PBL], etc.), which have retention rates of 50-90%. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has developed a useful framework of seven different learning formats​ that can be used to convey new information.

Clinical: Programs of Excellence provide professional development for clinical content (e.g., diabetes or heart failure treatments), as well as content related to care delivery transformation. Often, lower functioning programs lack resources or ability to encourage professional development, relying on faculty continuing to follow established habits and patterns of care and education. The need exists to transform primary care education through the training of both learners and teachers to deliver high-quality, 21st century care. This led to a national pilot training project​ across the three primary care specialties, called the Primary Care Faculty Development Initiative (PCFDI), which demonstrated transformation catalyzed by interdisciplinary learning communities.

Supporting clinical and educational transformation

The Professionals Accelerating Clinical and Educational Redesign (PACER) project has been initiated to create a sustainable model of interprofessional primary care faculty development. Tools and resources are currently available with reports on educational and clinical transformation from the organization teams involved.

Administrative: Programs of Excellence create professional development opportunities for staff to improve their effectiveness and efficiency through training in areas, such as project management, effective use of communication technologies, and use of hardware and software.

Professional development for residency program coordinators

The Association of Family Medicine Administration​ is an invaluable resource for program coordinators providing training in “the leadership tools needed to enhance administration of family medicine residency training programs in the changing environment of health care and education”—as well as a national network for program coordinators to learn from one another.

Leadership development for residency program directors

In addition, professional development for program directors in the administrative realm is critical to a program’s success. The AAFP offers development opportunities, such as the annual Residency Leadership Summit (RLS) which offers relevant and informative workshops for program directors and staff.

Intensive immersion for program directors and those aspiring to be program directors is offered through the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors in the National Institute for Program Director Development​.