Realist evaluation of faculty development for medical educators: What works for whom and why in the long-term.

Purpose: Realism is a perspective in which entities exist independently of being perceived or independently of our theories about them. The realist framework with its principle of explanatory causation was used for an in-depth exploration of faculty development (FD) since, despite the widespread investment in FD, the evidence that it enhances the effectiveness of teaching in the long-term is still limited. The study aimed to develop realist theories that explain the connections between contexts (C), mechanisms (M) and outcomes (O) to find out what works for whom and why in FD.

Faculty development for educators: a realist evaluation.

The effectiveness of faculty development (FD) activities for educators in UK medical schools remains underexplored. This study used a realist approach to evaluate FD and to test the hypothesis that motivation, engagement and perception are key mechanisms of effective FD activities. The authors observed and interviewed 33 course participants at one UK medical school in 2012.

A systematic review of faculty development activities in family medicine.

Background: Faculty development (FD) has been defined as a planned programme to prepare institutions and faculty members for their roles in the areas of teaching, research, administration and career management. However, there are few generalisable evaluations of FD activities available to help family medicine FD planners to choose the most effective training strategies.

Aim: To assess the evidence for the effectiveness of family medicine FD activities.

Preventable hospital mortality: learning from retrospective case record review.

Objective: To determine the proportion of hospital deaths associated with preventable problems in care and how they can be reduced.

Design: A two phase before and after evaluation of a hospital mortality reduction programme.

Setting: A district general hospital in Warwickshire, England.