Objective: To determine faculty's perceptions and expectations from Department of Medical Education (DME).
Study design: Mixed methods study (sequential exploratory design).
Place and duration of study: University Medical and Dental College (UMDC) and Punjab Medical College (PMC), Faisalabad, from March to May 2011.
Methodology: Faculty members teaching at PMC and UMDC were enrolled for semi-structured interviews with four senior faculty members (non-probability purposive sampling) in the qualitative phase to get in-depth information. After content analysis, themes were generated and a questionnaire with closed ended items was developed to validate the findings of the qualitative phase. In the quantitative phase, a cross-sectional survey was conducted using this questionnaire. It was sent to all 250 working faculty members, out of whom 149 (60%) responded. The results of this survey were analyzed by descriptive analysis using SPSS version 17. The analyses of qualitative and quantitative phases were integrated in the final interpretation phase to draw a conclusion.
Results: In faculty members' opinion, functions of DME were faculty development (83%), interdepartmental collaboration (81%), research (77%), curriculum development (66%), career counselling (62%) and faculty evaluation (60%). Development of DME was considered a positive change by 119 (80%) respondents.
Conclusion: Majority of the faculty members working in UMDC and PMC, Faisalabad considered DME a positive change.