Optimizing Faculty Recruitment for Quality Enhancement Plan Programs at UT Southwestern

BACKGROUND: Patient handovers serve as a major source of preventable adverse patient outcomes in healthcare settings. While standardization of this process can help reduce error, no consensus exists as to the best method of improving handover education. One potential method would focus on optimizing the recruitment of faculty scholars as leaders of new courses, thereby providing strong leadership as well as reducing recruitment and retention costs for institutions. Improved handover education will ensure that future physicians are prepared to work as effective members of healthcare teams and as a result improve patient care and safety. LOCAL PROBLEM: At UT Southwestern, the Team FIRST initiative seeks to improve handover education through creating new courses addressing this topic. However, faculty will need to be successfully recruited to ensure their success. Current faculty recruitment practices need to be identified in order to guide the optimal approach for maximizing the number of faculty scholars identified among potential candidates for course leadership. METHODS: Based on the emphasis of incorporating simulation education into the new educational activities comprising Team FIRST, learning communities at UT Southwestern utilizing simulation education were identified and faculty in either recruiter or recruit roles in each were identified. These faculty would serve as the source of data on current recruitment practices. Two sets of questions were created and used to guide 30-minute standardized interviews with the selected faculty in five different learning communities at UT Southwestern. Questions focused on outlining motivators and deterrents for position acceptance, ideal characteristics of candidates, steps in the recruitment process, and faculty development opportunities available after hire. Questions were revised as appropriate to improve the yield of pertinent data. The data from each interview was used to create a process map outlining the recruitment process for each educational program. These along with summaries of the question responses were sent back to interviewed faculty for verification of accuracy. Process maps were compared to identify general patterns in recruitment at UT Southwestern, and the responses to the other questions were tabulated for easy comparison and review. The patterns identified based on the data collected were used to create an application that will be used for faculty recruitment for the Team FIRST educational activities in upcoming years. INTERVENTIONS: The interventions used included the interview questions asked of faculty, which served to obtain data on and outline current recruitment practices at UT Southwestern. This information was then used to create an application for the newly created educational activities comprising Team FIRST, which will be evaluated to determine its reliability in identifying highly-invested faculty scholars from among the potential faculty candidates. RESULTS: Recruiters sought individuals with previous experience related to the position they were seeking and used student evaluations of faculty members to evaluate the quality of their previous engagements. Recruiters also emphasized enthusiasm, motivation, and realistic expectations as additional ideal characteristics. Recruiters identified financial incentives, opportunities for career development and advancement, and contribution to student growth as potential motivators for accepting a position, while time constraints and limited financial compensation were identified as deterrents. From the recruit perspective, an interest in teaching, departmental and student advocacy, and innovation served as both ideal characteristics and motivators for seeking a position while a lack of time, promotion, and tenure opportunities served as deterrents. The first step of faculty recruitment processes at UT Southwestern was the identification of a potential candidate either by invitation by higher-level faculty involved in the program or due to expressed interest by the candidate in the program which then led to their compilation into a list for consideration for the position. Once a current position opened, or new positions were created due to expansion of the program, the candidate's suitability for the position was assessed using an application often requiring endorsement from the department chair. Once an individual was selected, they would receive onboarding training to prepare them for the position in the program. CONCLUSION: Through multiple discussions with faculty in various learning communities, general pattern and trends in faculty recruitment practices at UT Southwestern were outlined. Based on these similarities, ideal faculty recruit characteristics were identified that could be used to guide the creation of an application for to help with the faculty recruitment process for the educational activities that make up Team FIRST. Through using this application and revising it as needed to improve the rate at which faculty scholars are identified, faculty recruitment can be optimized to ensure strong leadership for new courses aiming to improve patient handover education.