A Virtual Success: Student and Faculty Feedback on an Expanded Interprofessional Faculty Development Program
Background: Faculty development is a priority for our teamwork simulation programs. Student final evaluations of our programs previously included assessment of student knowledge and attitudinal change but not feedback about facilitator quality. We rapidly expanded our program from 148 students in March 2021 to 738 students in March 2022 with a concomitant increase in facilitators, many of whom were new. Therefore, we wanted to assess quality and effectiveness of faculty development, faculty experience as facilitators, and student experience with faculty.
Methodology: To gauge the success of our faculty onboarding and training process, and to obtain a 360-degree view of facilitator training and quality, we conducted 3 surveys. First, we asked facilitators to provide feedback on the training sessions and materials, and their experiences conducting the teamwork simulations. We asked students for their perception of their facilitators’ skills and shared these results with individual facilitators. Finally, we surveyed facilitators on the usefulness of the student feedback on their skills.
Results: 45 individuals from 6 professions (education, medicine, nursing, nurse practitioner, pharmacy, physician assistant) served as facilitators. Students from 4 professions (medicine, nursing, nurse practitioner, pharmacy) participated in the simulations, 565 (76.6%) of whom completed the post-simulation faculty feedback survey. Students answered open-ended and Likert-style questions related to their facilitator’s debriefing skills. Most students selected agree or strongly agree for Likert-style questions; free-text responses were overwhelmingly positive.
Facilitators found the materials to be helpful and felt prepared to lead the simulations. They found the program to be enjoyable and the students to be engaged. Facilitators provided constructive criticism that will be used to improve future simulations.
Facilitator survey on the usefulness of student feedback revealed that the feedback will help facilitators improve their facilitation skills and will support promotion.
Conclusion: The updated faculty development session and newly implemented feedback process were beneficial to faculty and will enable improvements at the individual faculty and programmatic level.
Reflections: While student feedback is valuable, it should be augmented with peer feedback. Looking forward, we aim to develop a mechanism for co-facilitators to provide constructive feedback to each other. Additionally, we aim to encourage all facilitators to attend our Center’s faculty development sessions on facilitation and debriefing.
Priority Criteria Fulfillment: Through faculty development and teamwork simulation, we aim to create educators who model the attributes of high-functioning team leaders and future healthcare professionals who can work and thrive on interprofessional healthcare teams. Team-ready clinicians will contribute to achieving the Quadruple Aim.
