FFI - Project 1:

Family Medicine Faculty Database Design and Maintenance Planning


Contact Person:
James Bobula, PhD
Department of Family Medicine
University of Wisconsin-Madison
777 S Mills Street
Madison, WI 53715-1896
Phone 608-263-6990
Fax: 608-263-5813
E-mail: jbobula@fammed.wisc.edu

The goals of this project are:

  1. to identify ways in which a national database of Family Medicine faculty would facilitate the achievement of organizational objectives, particularly those related to longitudinal faculty career development, being pursued by STFM and related associations, ie, AAFP/COE, ADFM, AFPRD, RRC, and AFPA;

  2. to identify the data elements essential for producing the information required in meeting such objectives;

  3. to develop practical data collection instruments and procedures for eliciting data from appropriate sources;

  4. to advise STFM on conducting a preliminary cycle of data collection; and

  5. to implement a prototype database that assembles the data collected by STFM and produces information pertinent to the identified organizational objectives.

In the first phase of the project, the database project consultant communicated with members of the Faculty Futures Initiative Project Team and with a project Consultative Panel representing the related Family Medicine associations listed above to establish the purposes of the database, to draft policies governing use of the database, and to define essential data elements and database structures. This preliminary work was reviewed and modified by the FFI Advisory Committee and Project Team in February 1999.

In the second phase of the project, the data elements identified in the first phase of the project were translated into a survey instrument with separate forms for collecting information on salaried and community faculty. The survey was piloted by five departments of family medicine and three family medicine residencies. A version of the survey revised based on the pilot was recommended to STFM, which distributed the final version nationally in September 1999. Concurrent with the survey development, a Microsoft(r) Access prototype database was designed for keyboarding the survey forms and for analysis of the survey data. The database design segregates faculty, department and residency identifying information such as name and address from demographic information to ensure confidentiality in reporting.

In the current and final phase of the project, to be completed in the first quarter of 2000, the data collected by STFM is being entered into the prototype database. Illustrative reports will be produced from the database, and recommendations will be made to STFM, along with estimated costs for maintaining the database in the years ahead.


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Last modified January 6, 2000