Faculty clinician-educator tracks have become increasingly common at US academic medical centers. Although many radiology faculty members belong to such tracks, there is little training in radiology residencies to prepare residents to take on these roles. The authors present a summary of a novel radiology residency clinician-educator pathway developed and piloted at their institution. The key components of the pathway include protected time to work on a substantive education project and a small number of high-quality didactic lectures. Publication or presentation in some form is expected. The pathway includes regular mentorship from highly regarded clinician-educators, as well as didactic training in education techniques and skills. A formal application process was established, as were methods of evaluation during and after the experience.
The rise of clinician-educators
Academic medical centers are commonly perceived as the home of “triple-threat” physicians: those who excel at patient care, research, and education equally. However, there has been a trend at many academic institutions toward developing faculty tracks that permit emphasis on education rather than on research as a pathway to career advancement. Many trainees have expressed a desire to remain in the academic environment as nationally recognized clinician-educators but may not wish to be involved in pure bench or clinical research.
In 2005, more than 100 academic medical centers offered these tracks, intended for those specializing in clinical work and the education of medical students, residents, and fellows . The role of such tracks in academic departments has been extensively described in the literature, including in such disparate fields as palliative medicine, rheumatology, pediatrics, dermatology, and general and subspecialty internal medicine . Various articles in the radiology literature have also discussed the increasing importance of clinician-educator tracks to academic radiology and to the future of the specialty .
The current state of radiology residencies
Radiology residencies provide exceptional clinical exposure though often are lacking in preparing residents for academic careers. Exposure to research, specifically with the intent of preparing residents for research-focused academic careers, has been extensively discussed in the literature, at national meetings, and within individual radiology departments . As a result, many departments offer protected research time, a dedicated research pathway , or even a combined PhD-residency option . Of note, the latest version of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s program requirements calls for at least one scholarly project .
To our knowledge, no pathway has been developed specifically to prepare radiology residents for clinician-educator faculty positions. A limited number of such pathways have been developed and reported in the internal medicine and psychiatry literature, but none in radiology .
We outline the objectives of a radiology residency clinician-educator pathway (CEP). We describe the implementation of such a pathway at our institution and our initial experience. Although creating such a pathway can be daunting, such efforts could dovetail with the residency restructuring required by the new radiology board examination .
Clinician-educator pathway objectives
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Developing a clinician-educator pathway
Protected Time
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Course Work
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Mentorship
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Education-related Projects
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Lecture Development and Teaching
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Evaluation
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Implementation
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Initial experience
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Conclusions
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Appendix
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