Clinical Teaching Improvement: The Transportability of the Stanford Faculty Development Program

Background: The Stanford Faculty Development Center (SFDC) at Stanford University developed a teaching improvement course for medical teachers that has been widely disseminated using a train-the-trainer model. We were curious to see if cultural factors might influence the applicability and impact of the course when delivered to non-American participants by a facilitator from that culture.

Methods: A Swedish anaesthesiologist at Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden, was trained in October 2004 at Stanford University. From January 2005 to March 2007 he delivered five faculty development seminar series at Uppsala University Hospital to 40 physicians from different departments. Participants rated the usefulness of the seminar series and retrospective pre- and post-seminar ratings were used to assess effects on participants' teaching skills and behaviours.

Results: Participants rated the seminars as highly useful (M = 4.8, SD = 0.4). Participants' ratings of their teaching ability indicated significant increases across a variety of clinical and non-clinical teaching settings (p < 0.001), and positive changes in teaching behaviours were found for all seven educational categories assessed (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: This faculty development model is highly transportable to medical teachers in Sweden, and capable of producing positive results, consistent with those found in the United States.