The role of the health professions educator in health professions schools is important for the planning and implementation of the curriculum, for assisting the students in their learning and for assessing the students’ achievement of learning outcomes. This applies to all types of curricula, whether traditional or innovative. In many instances, the focus on the curriculum surpasses that on the teacher, although curriculum development and implementation also require teacher development. [1]
The role of the medical teacher has three main interrelated pillars, they are providing clinical service, teaching, and scholarship. [2] Although it is difficult to find standards and measures of faculty members’ performance, faculty members are required to report the quality of their performance in these three main pillars to different stakeholders, such as students, promotion committees, heads of departments, and accrediting bodies. [3]
There are many changes that have taken place to the medical curricula during the past twenty years. They evolve mainly around shifting from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach to learning and the accompanying reform to the curricula. [4] Integration and problem-based learning are being extensively applied in health professions schools throughout the world. Along with these new curriculum models are changes in the curriculum management processes, teaching and learning methods, as well as assessment methods. These major changes in curricula required changes in the roles of the health professions educators as well. [5]
Harden and Crosby [6] identified six main areas describing the functions of the medical teacher. They are the medical teacher as an information provider, as a role model, as a facilitator of learning, as a planner, as an assessor, and as a resource developer. The six areas comprised twelve roles of the medical teacher. They emphasized that the roles of the teacher vary depending on the nature of the curriculum, the level of the students and the institutional culture. The roles are believed to also change with the level of the experience of the teacher. Later, Harden et al. [7] further clarified and elaborated on the model to describe eight roles of the medical teacher, which are the teacher as an information provider and coach, as a professional, as a facilitator and mentor, as a curriculum developer and implementer, as an assessor and diagnostician, as a role model, as a manager and leader, and as a scholar. Hesketh et al. [8] eloped a model specifically tailored to the clinical educator and included twelve competencies of the clinical educator divided on three circles; performance of task, approach to task, and professionalism.
In the field of dentistry, a competency model was developed for dental faculty that presented four main competencies, which are teaching, integration, application and discovery. These competency areas would enable the dental teacher to acquire the roles of information manager, curriculum developer, discipline leader, committee member, clinician, mentor, and scholar. [9] In the field of nursing, the Commission for Nursing Education Accreditation (CNEA) emphasizes on acquiring teaching competencies in order to better fulfill their roles as nurse educators. [10] Competency frameworks in different fields of nursing profession were developed, namely community work, palliative care and geriatric care. [11]
A set of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) were developed in the year 2021 that evolved around 10 functions of the health professions educator, which are lecturing, teaching small groups, teaching lab classes and skills education, bedside teaching, mentoring and tutoring, supervising interns, assessing written work of students, designing and developing a course, developing and administering a test, and assessing interns. [12]
It is believed that the student’s learning experience is largely determined by the presence of an adequate number of faculty members who are knowledgeable in their content area, have enough pedagogical expertise, and have sensitivity and commitment to their profession. [13]
Nowadays, many universities in the Eastern Mediterranean region, especially private universities, have common governance for all health professions colleges in the university, namely the colleges of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, and applied medical sciences. Faculty members in these universities teach and assess students in the five colleges, and also receive faculty development activities and postgraduate certification in education in an interprofessional manner. This applied to faculty development provided by the university itself, or by independent bodies that offer continuous professional development programs, credited by hours required for relicensing and promotion. These practices have removed many of the boundaries between the different health professions and created the need to make a common framework for the roles of health professions educator, whether a medical doctor, a dentist, a pharmacist, or a healthcare worker. This framework is expected to also be a measure of their effectiveness as health profession educators. The aim of this study is to develop a questionnaire that measures the effectiveness of the health professions educators in the different health professions schools in the Eastern Mediterranean context. This questionnaire can guide the health professions educators on developing their portfolios as educators, and also may guide them for self-assessment and evaluation of their competencies. It may also serve as a needs assessment tool for designing faculty development programs in the health professions institutions and can help with performance appraisal of staff members and be a guide for orienting newly recruited staff on their core functions.