A Faculty Growth Perspective on Peer Review of Teaching: An Institution-Wide, Customizable Approach to Peer Review.

As academic medical centers have moved away from using learner ratings of instruction as a demonstration of quality teaching in the promotion process, Indiana University School of Medicine sought to create a peer review of teaching system. We created our system in 2010 and have engaged in continuous quality improvement since. In these efforts, we sought to answer the question, "How can we create a system of peer review of teaching that provides high-quality feedback to faculty and encourages autonomy and growth?" Our peer review of teaching system includes a website, with a brief introduction to the concept of peer review, as well as a series of customizable forms that allows faculty and peer reviewers to choose items for observation and feedback based on teaching setting.

Engaging All Stakeholders to Create a Trusted, Data-Driven, Process Improvement Approach to Addressing Learner Mistreatment.

: Learner mistreatment has remained an ongoing challenge in academic medicine despite accreditation requirements mandating that every program has systems in place to prevent and respond to mistreatment. While efforts vary across institutions, much remains unanswered in the literature about best practices. Additionally, for the foreseeable future, challenges in the learning environment will likely continue and potentially worsen, given the confluence of multiple external stressors including the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty burnout and general political divisiveness in the nation.

The Development of a Comprehensive Mental Health Service for Medical Trainees.

Mental distress in medical learners and its consequent harmful effects on personal and professional functioning, a well-documented concern, draws attention to the need for solutions. The authors review the development of a comprehensive mental health service within a large and complex academic medical education system, created with special attention to offering equitable, accessible, and responsive care to all trainees. From the inception of the service in January 2017, the authors placed particular emphasis on eliminating obstacles to learners' willingness and ability to access care, including concerns related to cost, session limits, privacy, and flexibility with modality of service delivery.

Diversifying Faculty Leadership in Academic Medicine: The Program to Launch Underrepresented in Medicine Success (PLUS).

PLUS (Program to Launch Underrepresented in Medicine Success) is a 2-year cohort program at Indiana University School of Medicine providing professional development, funding and skills to produce scholarship, and a community to mitigate social and/or professional isolation for underrepresented in medicine (URiM) faculty. In year 1, scholars participate in leadership and professional development seminars and regular meetings with their mentor(s). They are assigned a PLUS Advisory Council advisor with whom they meet 2 to 3 times annually.

A competency-based approach to recruiting, developing, and giving feedback to department chairs.

Academic health centers (AHCs) are under unprecedented pressure, making strong leadership during these challenging times critical. Department chairs have tremendous influence in their AHCs, yet data indicate that--despite outstanding academic credentials--they are often underprepared to take on these important leadership roles. The authors sought to improve the approach to recruiting, developing, and giving feedback to department chairs at their institution, the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), by reorganizing these processes around six key leadership competencies: leadership and team development, performance and talent management, vision and strategic planning, emotional intelligence, communication skills, and commitment to the tripartite mission.

Discussing the undiscussable with the powerful: why and how faculty must learn to counteract organizational silence.

Dialogue is essential for transforming institutions into learning organizations, yet many well-known characteristics of academic health centers (AHCs) interfere with open discussion. Rigid hierarchies, intense competition for resources, and the power of peer review in advancement processes all hamper difficult conversations, thereby contributing to organizational silence, and at great cost to the institution. Information necessary for critical decisions is not shared, individuals and the organization do not learn from mistakes, and diverse perspectives from those with less power are not entertained, or worse, are suppressed.

Practice-based learning and improvement in family medicine student clerkships: a CERA study.

Background: Practice-based learning and improvement (PBLI) has been promoted as a key component of competency-based training in medical student education, but little is known about its implementation.

Methods: This project is part of a larger CERA omnibus survey of family medicine medical student clerkship directors carried out from July to September 2012. Analyses were conducted to assess clerkship infrastructure, learner assessment and feedback, and clerkship director perceptions of PBLI curricula.

An expanded model of faculty vitality in academic medicine.

Many faculty in today's academic medical centers face high levels of stress and low career satisfaction. Understanding faculty vitality is critically important for the health of our academic medical centers, yet the concept is ill-defined and lacking a comprehensive model. Expanding on previous research that examines vital faculty in higher education broadly and in academic medical centers specifically, this study proposes an expanded model of the unique factors that contribute to faculty vitality in academic medicine.

Flexibility in faculty work-life policies at medical schools in the Big Ten conference.

Purpose: Women lag behind men in several key academic indicators, such as advancement, retention, and securing leadership positions. Although reasons for these disparities are multifactorial, policies that do not support work-life integration contribute to the problem. The objective of this descriptive study was to compare the faculty work-life policies among medical schools in the Big Ten conference.

Objective structured clinical exams: a critical review.

Since their inception in the 1970s, objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) have become popular and now are part of the US Medical Licensing Examination for all US medical graduates. Despite general acceptance of this method, there is debate over the value of OSCE testing compared to more traditional methods. A review of reliability and validity research does not clearly show superiority of OSCE testing.