Peer observation of teaching: A feasible and effective method of physician faculty development

ABSTRACT

Physician faculty learn teaching skills informally while fighting competing professional obligations. One underutilized proven technique to improve teaching skills is peer observation with feedback. We aimed to understand benefits and challenges of a physician faculty development program based on peer observation of teaching and to develop best practice recommendations for future program development. The authors developed a peer observation-based physician faculty development program from 2015 to 2017. Two interviewers conducted and analyzed qualitative interviews with 13 faculty participants and four non-participants using content analysis to identify themes and subthemes in NVivo©. Participant-identified program benefits included conveyed institutional support for teaching, the opportunity for peer observation with direct and timely feedback, the opportunity for community building, and overall program feasibility. Program challenges included competing scheduling demands, variability in feedback quality, and difficulty maintaining engagement for the program duration. Potential areas for improvement included participation incentives, external faculty involvement, assistance with program logistics and administration, and improvement in the consistency of the feedback experience. While peer observation is a valued approach to physician faculty development of teaching skills, competing demands on physicians may still limit program effectiveness. Program sustainability depends on optimizing feedback quality, boosting motivation for participation, and providing administrative support.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer observation
• faculty development
• feedback
• community of educators

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge and thank Cynthia J. Brown, MD, MSPH, FACP for supporting the faculty development program and for providing manuscript edits.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Macy Stockdill is supported by the NIH/NINR under Grant 1F31NR018782. Bailey A. Hendricks is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholarship. Content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH;National Institute of Nursing Research; Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing Scholar