Educating the Educators

Short-Term Exchange Fellowships

The Short-Term Exchange Fellowships (STEF) offer short-term (one- to three-month) exchange opportunities for selected Fellows from former ECFMG fellowship programs and the current FAIMER IFME program. The STEF program allows for either the Fellows to return to the United States or for U.S. faculty mentors to visit the Fellows' home country medical schools. These short-term programs are designed to enhance or expand on the Fellows' initial educational experiences in the United States.

Criteria for selection include:

• A minimum of two years of residence in the home country following the Fellow's completion of the initial fellowship.
• Ongoing collaboration with the U.S. mentor since completing the fellowship.
• Submission of a design for utilizing the follow-up fellowship to enhance the quality of medical education in the home country.

For the 2002-2003 program year, FAIMER invited eleven former Fellows to submit proposals with their mentors for short-term fellowships. These invitations yielded two proposals, both of which were deemed eligible for review.

In February 2003, an award was made to Christian Isichei, B.M., B.Ch., M.Sc., from the University of Jos in Nigeria. Dr. Isichei's initial experience consisted of curriculum development, governance, and methods of course development. The primary emphasis of his STEF fellowship, hosted by the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, was to obtain the knowledge and skills to develop a "teaching the teachers" program.

Fellowship Surveys

Gathering information about the fellowship experience and its impact on the professional lives of former Fellows is essential to ensure the continual improvement of the programs. To this end, FAIMER began the process of surveying former Fellows and their mentors in 2003.

Surveys were sent to Fellows who had participated in the former Foreign Faculty Fellowship Program in the Basic Medical Sciences (FFFP) and International Medical Scholars Program (IMSP), and the current IFME and STEF programs. The survey included questions on employment, national and international career activities and achievements, and the quality of the fellowship experience. The survey was designed to:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of the fellowship experience and the fellowship programs.
• Determine the impact of the previous fellowship on the Fellow, the school, and the Fellow's home country.
• Re-establish communication with former Fellows.
• Develop new program ideas based on the needs of the Fellow, school, and country.

FAIMER's survey of fellowship mentors was sent to current and former mentors who participated in ECFMG and FAIMER fellowship programs. The survey was designed to assess the reasons for becoming a mentor, the skills of the Fellows mentored, and the mentors' post-fellowship contact with the Fellows. The purpose of the mentor's survey is to:

• Evaluate the fellowship experience from the mentor's point of view.
• Expand the list of IFME mentors.
• Re-establish communication with mentors who are not involved with IFME.
• Learn of any ongoing collaborations with former Fellows.
• Learn their level of interest in mentoring in the future.
• Develop partnerships with current and former mentors and their institutions.

FAIMER continues to collect the responses from these surveys. The responses will be analyzed by program staff, with the assistance of FAIMER research staff. The final results of the surveys will be published in FAIMER MedEd, FAIMER's free e-mail newsletter for the international medical education community. To subscribe to FAIMER MedEd, visit the FAIMER website.

History of the Fellowship Programs

The International Fellowships in Medical Education (IFME) and the Short-Term Exchange Fellowships (STEF) were authorized by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) in 1996. The IFME program represents a merger of two former ECFMG programs: the Foreign Faculty Fellowship Program in the Basic Medical Sciences (FFFP) and the International Medical Scholars Program (IMSP).

The FFFP was administered from 1983 to 1996. It was developed in response to concerns about deficiencies in basic science curricula in many international medical schools, especially those in developing countries. The purpose of the FFFP program was to enrich the teaching of the basic biomedical sciences in medical schools abroad. It was designed to attract applications from faculty whose primary interest was in learning about teaching methods, course content development, and content assessment methodologies in the basic biomedical sciences taught in U.S. medical schools. The program enabled Fellows to teach and study for up to one year in medical schools in the United States under the tutelage of selected mentors in biomedical science departments.

The IMSP program (1988-1997), modeled after the FFFP program in terms of the types of individuals it sought to serve, responded specifically to the clinical training needs of international scholars and their home country needs. Educational programs ranged in length from a minimum of three months to a maximum of one year.

In 2001, the IFME and STEF programs were transitioned to FAIMER, and in 2003, the programs were renamed the FAIMER International Fellowships in Medical Education and the FAIMER Short-Term Exchange Fellowships, respectively.

During 2003, the staff of FAIMER's fellowship programs worked to unify processes and procedures of the FAIMER IFME and STEF programs with those of the FAIMER Institute, which had been established by FAIMER in 2001. To bring the IFME/STEF application and program year cycles in line with those of the Institute, FAIMER did not accept IFME applications or solicit STEF proposals in 2003. This hiatus also allowed staff of all educational programs to develop a web-based application common to the Institute and IFME programs and to begin work on a common database for all fellowship programs that will track their progress and facilitate research.