The Executive Skills Profile: a method for assessing development needs among family medicine faculty.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this paper is to report on how the Executive Skills Profile, a measure of job demands and employee skills, can be used as a faculty development tool in academic family medicine departments.

METHODS

The Executive Skills Profile (ESP) identifies 72 work activities and groups them into 12 scales, each of which is displayed graphically. Faculty identify the work activities that are relevant to their jobs and then identify the personal skills they must have to carry out those work activities.

RESULTS

The ESP successfully characterized the job demands and personal skills of one family medicine department. The evaluation showed that overall perceived job demands were greater than the faculty's perceived personal skills, particularly in the areas of interpersonal and behavioral skills.

CONCLUSIONS

The ESP can be used to characterize the job demands and personal skills of faculty.