SOPPA
This chapter establishes standards for continual faculty development and periodic performance review to ensure that accredited fellowship centres maintain high educational standards throughout the accreditation cycle.
Excellent clinicians are not automatically excellent educators.
Faculty development is a continuous institutional responsibility.
Educational performance should be evaluated separately from clinical performance.
Feedback should be constructive, confidential and improvement-oriented.
Accredited fellowship centres are required to fulfil the following institutional obligations for faculty development.
Develop and maintain a formal annual faculty development plan updated every accreditation cycle.
Provide formally allocated, protected time for educational development activities within clinical rosters.
Support faculty attendance at educational workshops, SOPPA programmes, and accredited CPD events.
Maintain up-to-date, auditable records of all faculty development activities, certificates, and appraisals.
All Core Faculty are expected to demonstrate and continuously develop competencies across four domains.
Teaching & Facilitation
Evaluation & Feedback
Leadership & Conduct
Research & Improvement
Each Core Faculty member must undergo an annual educational review covering the following domains:
Teaching contribution — volume, quality, and variety of educational activities
Assessment quality — rigour, timeliness, and bias avoidance in formal assessments
Mentoring activity — regularity and documentation of mentorship sessions
Academic attendance — participation in scheduled academic sessions and grand rounds
Research & QI participation — scholarly output and quality improvement engagement
Fellow feedback — anonymised summary of fellow-reported educational experience
Personal development goals for the following year
Anonymous fellow feedback should contribute to educational quality improvement but must not be the sole determinant of faculty performance.
Fellow feedback is one component of a multidimensional educational review. Centres must implement safeguards to ensure anonymity and prevent punitive use of feedback data.
Review faculty development records and confirm completeness against the annual plan.
Verify that all annual educational appraisals have been completed on schedule.
Confirm implementation and documentation of improvement plans where indicated.
Interview faculty directly regarding their educational development activities and goals.
Review fellow feedback summaries and confirm anonymisation and appropriate use.
No Structured Development Programme: Absence of a formal, annually reviewed faculty development plan.
No Educational Appraisal Process: Faculty performance appraised solely on clinical metrics without educational assessment.
Inadequate Documentation: Missing faculty logs, unsigned appraisals, or absence of educational portfolios.
Persistent Deficiencies Without Corrective Action: Recurring issues identified in successive review cycles with no documented improvement plan.
Faculty Development Database: Centralised repository of all faculty development records and activity logs.
Annual Appraisal Workflow: Digital appraisal forms with structured completion, sign-off, and archiving.
Upload of Certificates & Evidence: Secure facility for faculty to upload CPD certificates and supporting materials.
Reminder System: Automated alerts for overdue annual reviews, outstanding appraisals, or lapsing certificates.
Dashboard: Real-time completion status for all faculty reviews, certificates, and development activities.