Measuring Faculty Effort and Contributions in Medical Education

Abstract

A national panel on medical education was appointed as a component of the AAMC's Mission-based Management Program and charged with developing a metrics system for measuring medical school faculty effort and contributions to a school's education mission. The panel first defined important variables to be considered in creating such a system: the education programs in which medical school faculty participate; the categories of education work that may be performed in each program (teaching, development of education products, administration and service, and scholarship in education); and the array of specific education activities that faculty could perform in each of these work areas. The panel based the system on a relative value scale, since this approach does not equate faculty performance solely to the time expended by a faculty member in pursuit of a specific activity. Also, a four-step process to create relative value units (RVUs) for education activities was developed. This process incorporates quantitative and qualitative measures of faculty activity and also can measure and value the distribution of faculty effort relative to a school's education mission. When adapted to the education mission and culture of an individual school, the proposed metrics system can provide critical information that will assist the school's leadership in evaluating and rewarding faculty performance in education and will support a mission-based management strategy in the school.

Compensating the Transplant Professional: Time for a Model Change

“…In response many organizations have created their own academic RVU (aRVU) (14)(15)(16)(17)(18). Currently most academic medical centers as well as large group practices and newer Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) tend to incorporate various metrics to calculate and compensate physician clinical productivity (wRVU), academic/education activities (aRVU), quality initiatives (incentive bonus for pay-for-performance payments), etc.…”

Time to Teach: Addressing the Pressure on Faculty Time for Education

“…First, will there be a relative value assigned to different teaching activities reflecting the institutional priorities? For example, the Medical Education Panel of the Mission-based Management Program of the AAMC devised a relative value scale since they felt that equating faculty performance with time spent on a teaching activity was inadequate [19]. The result was a complicated four-step process to create Relative Value Units (RVUs) for education.…”

L’évaluation de l'enseignement : pour quelles décisions ?

“…Reconnaître l'enseignement comme une authentique activité universitaire, notamment pour des décisions de recrutement ou de promotion, implique d'évaluer cette activité. Différentes approches de ce type d'évaluation sont rapportées dans la littérature [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] . La majorité des expériences publiées concerne des systè-mes de quantification des activités d'éducation.…”