Professor plays a key role in the development and achievement of medical schools. Therefore, the importance of faculty development (FD) in medical schools is increasing. FD refers to activities that can improve the skills, knowledge, and effectiveness of professors in their roles. While FD has primarily addressed what it takes to be an educator, the concept has gradually expanded to include research, career, leadership, administration, and clinical practice [1]. Sheets and Schwenk [2] defined FD as any planned activity to improve an individual’s knowledge and skills in areas considered to be essential to a faculty member’s performance (teaching, administrative, research, and clinical skills).

The roles of a medical school professor include teaching, research, clinical practice, and service [3], with the first three being the three pillars of academic medicine [4]. Medical school professors have different emphasis on these roles depending on their specialty. Because of the high proportion of clinical professors in medical schools, the clinical role is gradually becoming the largest of the four roles, followed by research, teaching, and service [5]. To fulfill these roles, doctors are appropriately trained in research and clinical practice before becoming a professor. However, because of limited opportunities for teaching and the heavy demands of research and clinical practice, the proficiency level in teaching is relatively low [6]. This explains why teaching has been the primary focus of FD until recently.

In Korea, FD is mainly conducted by medical school programs and three major FD institutions (i.e., the National Teacher Training Center [NTTC] for Health Personnel at Seoul National University College of Medicine, Academy for Medical Education of the Korean Association of Medical Colleges [KAMC], and Korean Society of Medical Education [KSME]). The medical education accreditation standards also include FD standards for new and full-time professors, which have helped to regulate and promote FD. However, aside from the three major FD institutions, little is known about the themes, frequency, and types of programs offered in medical schools. According to a recent study, faculty members spent an average of 5.3 hours participating in medical education training and FD programs in medical schools every year, and the average number of faculty members who participated in these programs every year was 234 [7]. Assessment and evaluation, educational methods, professor roles, curriculum design, and curriculum themes were the most common topics in these programs. The programs were primarily in the form of workshops or seminars [7].

Although medical schools continue to develop professors to improve education quality, manage professors’ careers, improve professors’ performance, and meet medical education accreditation standards, FD programs still need to be systematized comprehensively. Most programs are limited to topics related to medical education and accreditation. Medical education programs are detailed and specialized [7], but other roles of the professor, including administration and research, have not been given significant attention. Even when surveying professor need, it was limited to FD programs in medical education. A study of the need for FD programs in medical schools suggested strengthening the execution of instruction, evaluating the session, diagnosing students’ class readiness, and providing class sessions with suitable levels and content [6]. In another study, diagnosis and reflection, test and feedback, and facilitation were identified as the most pressing needs of educators [8]. One study employed the CIPP evaluation model to evaluate and improve FD programs [9]. A recent systematic review of FD programs found that the types of FD programs were primarily workshops, short courses, and seminar series, with most programs focusing on the “faculty role” of information provider and coach, facilitator of learning and mentor, assessor, and diagnostician [10]. A focus group interview study with pediatric faculty identified barriers to FD opportunities and explored ways to improve them [11].

This study aimed to examine the current status and needs of FD programs in medical schools, FD institutions, or individual professors and to provide a foundation for proposing an FD strategy based on these needs. Depending on the specialty, timing, audience, and educational level, some FD needs may be applicable to medical schools, whereas others may need to be adapted by FD institutions. Medical schools and FD institutions in Korea should mutually support each other to establish a comprehensive and standardized FD system by focusing on various customized programs, quality assurance, evaluation measures, and continuous professional improvement of professors.

FD programs can improve the knowledge, skills, and professional competence of faculty members [12]. Moreover, the primary role of professors should be substantially considered in FD. In medical schools, the order of importance of professors’ responsibilities is clinical practice, research, teaching, and service. In terms of the workload of the clinical professors, according to our survey, the order of importance is clinical practice, research, teaching, and service. Meanwhile, in terms of basic medicine professors’ workload, the order of importance is research, teaching, service, and clinical practice. In addition, for professors in medical education and medical humanities, the order of importance is teaching, research, clinical practice, and service. According to the study by Kim et al. [13], the order of importance of accountability was research, teaching, clinical practice, and service. For clinical medicine professors, it was clinical practice, research, teaching, and service, but for basic medicine professors, it was research, teaching, service, and clinical practice. Although these results were obtained 20 years ago, the importance of work and accountability is similar for clinical and basic medical faculties. With the increasing proportion of clinical medicine faculties and emphasizing patient care at medical school hospitals, the importance of clinical practice has also increased.

Given the roles, responsibilities, and workload of professors, there is a need to broaden and diversify the topics, levels, and methods of teaching-oriented FD programs. Although the internal and external FD programs operated by medical schools (Table 1, Fig. 1) are mainly composed of teaching-related topics, most of the required program topics are other than teaching, except for student evaluation. Most of the programs in which professors participated were in the field of education. However, leadership, research, and service are topics that are in greater demand than those in which the professor participated. The survey results on the current status and needs of FD programs in Korea also show that most of them are limited to medical education [6-8]. In particular, leadership and self-development, research, and service, which are highly needed areas compared to the number of programs in operation, need to be expanded. Moreover, student guidance and counseling, and postgraduate medical education can be supplemented. Among the areas mentioned above, FD to improve leadership has been shown to be useful and beneficial and resulted in improved outcomes [14,15]. When organizing and improving FD programs and systems, a well-rounded program that covers not only teaching but also service, research, leadership, career development, and academic development is needed to address the major roles of faculty [1,16,17].

Medical schools have high needs in terms of research and leadership, but professors have higher needs. Medical schools have a higher need for student assessment, guidance, and counseling, whereas faculty have a higher need for curriculum themes. The specific roles and performance evaluations of faculties have gradually changed. Accordingly, the educational needs for FD have also changed. The number and topics of FD programs vary by professor role, and topics also vary by major. In addition, there has been a growing interest in self-care and life among professors with the increasing importance of work–life balance. Although FD programs are being implemented according to the needs and plans of medical school deans, FD officers, and educational experts at FD institutions, they must be tailored to meet the needs and performance of individual faculty members [11,18]. FD needs to shift from a system dominated by a few experts toward one that is more responsive to the needs of participating professors.

Professors can be broadly categorized into clinical, basic, medical education, and medical humanities based on their majors. Moreover, their positions include instructors, professors, assistant professors, and associate professors. However, FD programs are mostly general professor programs regardless of the major and position. The specific roles and competencies of professors vary depending on their major and position. The expected roles of professors, assistant professors, and associate professors are different in terms of research, administration, and teaching [19,20]. Therefore, in addition to the needs of medical schools and professors, customized programs are needed depending on the major and position. Just as there is a new professor workshop for new professors, programs should be tailored for course chairs, department chairs, directors, and deans based on their job titles. In this study, there was no significant difference in the needs of medical school professors by position. However, other positions (clinical professors, research professors, and so forth) had a higher needs for educational methods, and the higher the percentage of teaching, the higher the needs for curriculum development and evaluation, and the lower the needs for postgraduate medical education (data not shown). In the study on university faculty members, the needs and importance of teaching competencies differed depending on the length of experience and major field, and support programs and improvement methods differed accordingly [18].

The development and implementation of a needs-based, customized FD program requires a medical school FD office and experienced staff [21,22]. Ongoing quality control and regular evaluation are needed to ensure that the program remains relevant to changing needs [9,23]. For highly engaged and disengaged professors, it is important to identify factors that discourage participation (e.g., lack of time and low interest) and to develop ways to motivate them, respectively [24]. This weakness can be compensated for by having an FD office with the expertise to manage faculty engagement, a flexible and personalized FD curriculum [11], and a systemic strategy in terms of institutional culture, reimbursement, appreciation, utility, and accessibility [25]. On the basis of these recommendations, it is necessary to establish an FD program system that can be applied to all 40 medical schools.

Depending on the number of internal and external programs in which the professors participated, the topics they would like to participate in the future vary. Therefore, collaborative FD between medical schools and FD institutions requires distinction between their roles. Although FD institutions have been in operation for a long time and have demonstrated their characteristics, there are a few factors to consider as each medical school develops its FD capacity. Medical schools should focus on topics that are basic and essential for medical school professors with appropriate competencies (e.g., educational methods and student assessment), whereas FD institutions should focus on specialized topics that are necessary for some faculties (e.g., curriculum development and evaluation and new curriculum themes). FD institutions may develop institution-specific strategies based on the expected needs of medical school professors and offer differentiated programs based on the intended audience. They may also need to support FD programs in medical schools with small faculties or those requiring specialized expertise. It is up to each medical school to organize FD programs according to the position and role of their professors.

A limitation of this study is that it reflected the opinions of professors who participated in FD programs and did not reflect the opinions of passive professors who did not participate in FD programs. Therefore, it would be helpful to conduct future research on professors who do not participate or are not interested in FD programs. In addition, as a follow-up study, a qualitative study to reflect more detailed opinions of stakeholders on FD would be beneficial for the operation of a well-functioning FD program. We would also like to propose a practical study on the development of customized faculty development strategies for each FD institution or medical school, and the establishment of FD program systems according to positions or majors.