Department of Medical Education, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, 7 Rokietnicka St, 60-806, Poznan, Poland.
Edinburgh Medical School: Medical Education, University of Edinburgh, Chancellor's Building, EH16 4SB, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
BMC Med Educ. 2023 Jun 2;23(1):402. doi: 10.1186/s12909-023-04393-z.
The diversity of tasks entrusted to medical teachers with their simultaneous responsibility for the safety of patients and the effective education of future healthcare professionals requires maintaining a skillful balance between their teaching, scientific and clinical activities. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the work of both healthcare facilities and medical universities, forcing already overworked medical teachers to establish a new balance. One's ability to perform effectively in new, ambiguous, or unpredictable situations was described by Albert Bandura as a self-efficacy concept. Consequently, this study aimed to identify factors affecting the self-efficacy of medical teachers and the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on them.
Twenty-five semi-structured interviews with medical teachers were conducted using a flexible thematic guide. They were transcribed and analyzed by two independent researchers (researcher triangulation) with phenomenology as the qualitative approach.
Identified themes demonstrate a process of the evolvement of clinical teachers' self-efficacy in response to the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely the decline of self-efficacy in the first phase of the crisis, followed by building task-specific self-efficacy and the development of general self-efficacy.
The study shows the significance of providing care and support for medical teachers during a health crisis. Crisis management decision-makers at educational and healthcare institutions should consider the different roles of medical teachers and the possibility of overburden associated with the cumulation of the excessive number of patient, didactic, and research duties. Moreover, faculty development initiatives and teamwork should become a vital part of the organizational culture of medical universities. A dedicated tool acknowledging the specificity and context of medical teachers' work seems necessary to quantitatively evaluate their sense of self-efficacy.
医学教师既要对患者的安全负责，又要有效地教育未来的医疗保健专业人员，他们承担的任务种类繁多，这要求他们在教学、科研和临床活动之间保持熟练的平衡。与此同时，COVID-19 大流行扰乱了医疗保健机构和医科大学的工作，迫使已经过度劳累的医学教师建立新的平衡。阿尔伯特·班杜拉（Albert Bandura）将一个人在新的、模糊的或不可预测的情况下有效执行任务的能力描述为自我效能概念。因此，本研究旨在确定影响医学教师自我效能的因素，以及 COVID-19 大流行对他们的影响。
采用灵活的主题指南对 25 名医学教师进行了半结构式访谈。他们的转录文本由两名独立的研究人员（研究人员三角剖分）使用现象学进行分析，作为定性方法。
确定的主题展示了临床教师自我效能在 COVID-19 大流行突然爆发时的演变过程，即危机第一阶段自我效能的下降，随后是建立特定任务的自我效能和发展一般自我效能。
研究表明，在卫生危机期间为医学教师提供关怀和支持的重要性。教育和医疗机构的危机管理决策者应考虑医学教师的不同角色，以及与过度积累患者、教学和研究职责相关的过度劳累的可能性。此外，教师发展举措和团队合作应成为医学大学组织文化的重要组成部分。需要一个专门的工具来承认医学教师工作的特殊性和背景，以便对其自我效能感进行定量评估。
