Clinical teachers do not acquire teaching skills through their traditional health professional education. Faculty development programmes are required to train these clinicians in essential educational theory and practical teaching skills. Such interventions are critical to successful clerkship experiences and preparedness for professional practice. However, sustained engagement in these programmes is challenging. Education and healthcare organisations have differing priorities often resulting in competing demands placed on clinical teachers. The twelve tips described in this article offer logical and simple approaches to designing large-scale faculty development programmes for clinical teachers. These tips emphasise the application of system theory to identify and address key regulatory, institutional, and individual barriers to implementation, risks to successful delivery and tools for upscaling faculty development programmes.