Learners as Teachers: Development of a Novel Faculty Development Curriculum Utilizing Junior Faculty as Primary Authors

<ns3:p>Background Academic faculty development varies in scope and utility. Timely, specialty-specific faculty development helps support junior faculty and should be incorporated early in their academic careers. Junior faculty likely have the most to gain from faculty development but are rarely included in its creation. This study aimed to create and deploy an effective faculty development curriculum for junior emergency medicine (EM) faculty through experiential learning by using junior faculty as primary authors. Methods Eight senior faculty developed a list of high-yield topics. Seven junior faculty were assigned as primary authors for each of the topics according to interest. A senior faculty considered an expert in the area was assigned as a mentor. Topics were presented at a peer review session with all participants present. Following the session, participants took an electronic survey consisting primarily of 5 point Likert scale questions with an 86% response rate. Results Survey responses highlight faculty development as an academic gap and strongly support the curriculum’s importance and effectiveness. All responding junior faculty and the majority of senior faculty strongly agreed that creation of the modules and participation in the peer review process improved their knowledge (median of 5 for both questions). All respondents strongly agreed the topics covered were important and should be mandatory for all new academic faculty. Conclusions Using junior faculty as primary authors to create a specialty and institutional specific faculty development curriculum is an effective approach to create and deliver a curriculum. This method is cost-effective, well-received and sustainable as it builds on and strengthens pre-existing resources and relationships. This method also succeeded in creating a community of practice dedicated to sharing knowledge and skills around medical education. Given its generalizable framework, this model of curriculum development could likely be deployed in any graduate medical program regardless of specialty.</ns3:p>