Identification of tailored faculty development for diverse career trajectories in hospital medicine

Background Academic hospital medicine faculty possess diverse interests and pursue a variety of career pathways. Faculty development programs are essential for career advancement; however, a lack of alignment between individual faculty needs and development activities can impede career development efforts. To our knowledge, there are no studies that have examined whether clusters of faculty exist with similar development needs, for which tailored faculty development “packages” can be offered. Objective To determine whether distinct clusters of faculty with shared development needs can be identified and to explore faculty‐level factors associated with these clusters. Method We conducted a survey study among hospitalists at seven academic institutions from November 2023 to September 2024. We generated a comprehensive list of 33 potential faculty development topics and asked survey respondents to indicate whether each topic was important to them, choosing as many as applied. We used latent class analysis (LCA) to classify faculty into distinct clusters based on their selection of desired development topics. Results A total of 136 faculty (median age 38 years) participated in the study. LCA identified five distinct groups as the optimal solution: (1) Master clinician (29%), (2) medical education scholar (11%), (3) clinical investigator (24%), (4) educational leader (22%), and (5) operational leader (14%). Conclusion In a representative sample of academic hospitalists, we identified five distinct latent classes of faculty based on their preference for faculty development topics. These results can be leveraged to curate specific packages to optimally align faculty development offerings with diverse faculty interests and career trajectories.