Improving Clinical Teaching in China: Initial Report of a Multihospital Pilot Faculty Development Effort

BACKGROUND: The study's purpose was to investigate whether or not a US-based faculty development program could be successfully used to improve the teaching skills of Chinese medical faculty. DESCRIPTION: The program, based on the Stanford Faculty Development Program (SFDP) model, was presented to 28 faculty teachers affiliated with Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China. Outcomes included the attendees' satisfaction of the seminars and their ratings of self-reported teaching ability using a previously studied retrospective pre-post questionnaire. Paired mean scores of the retrospective pre-test were statistically compared to the means of the retrospective post-test for all respondents. EVALUATION: Twenty-eight teachers completed the survey. The seminars were rated highly and summative ratings of both global teaching performance and use of specific teaching behaviors were significantly improved between the retrospective pre- and post-test scores. CONCLUSION: We were able to demonstrate a positive effect of a Western-based faculty development course on the teaching skills of Chinese clinical medical teachers.