Level of Confidence in the 12 Roles of Medical Teacher. A Descriptive Study at Faculty of Medicine, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand

Abstract

BACKGROUND: An appropriate faculty development program is imperative for every medical school and should be tailored to suit the needs of individuals and the institution.OBJECTIVE: To measure the average level of confidence in each of the 12 roles of medical teachers and analyse if any of these factors: age, gender duration of teaching, and teaching in pre-clinical or clinical years has effect on the level of confidence in the teacher roles.MATERIAL AND METHOD: The online questionnaire invitations were sent via email to all 211 faculty members at Faculty of Medicine, Srinakharinwirot University, and 118 (55.9%) responded. The questionnaire asked about demographic data, teaching experience and their specialty or disciplines. The respondents were also asked to rate their level of confidence in each of the 12 teacher roles on a 5 point Likert scale ranging from 1 (none) to 5 (great).RESULTS: The three most highly rated roles on the level of confidence were the clinical teacher (4.11), the on the job role model (4.11) and the lecturer (3.97). The three roles with the lowest rating were the curriculum planner (3.08), the curriculum assessor (3.23) and the mentor (3.31). Age and teaching experience were positively correlated with the level of confidence in nearly all of the 12 teacher roles. The pre-clinical year teachers had a higher mean level of confidence than clinical teachers in 6 out of the 12 roles.CONCLUSION: The future faculty development programs should aim towards supporting self-evaluation of teaching, mentoring as well as promoting facilitative roles of the teacher Retention of faculty members at the institution is also important as the teaching experience significantly correlate with confidence in the teacher roles.