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Abstract
Background: There is a mismatch between the requirements of the multifaceted role of academic physicians and their education. Medical institutions use faculty development initiatives to support their junior academic physicians, however, these rarely revolve around academic physician competencies. The aim of this study was to identify these academic physician competencies and develop a competency framework customized to an organizational context.
Methods: The authors conducted semi-structured interviews and Critical Incident Technique with 25 academic physicians at a teaching medical center in the Middle East region inquiring about the behaviors of academic physicians in teaching, clinical, research, and administrative roles.
Results: Using content analysis, the authors identified 16 competencies: five “Supporting Competencies”, common to all four roles of academic physicians, and 11 “Function-Specific Competencies”, specific to the role being fulfilled. The developed framework shared similarities with frameworks reported in the literature but also had some distinctions.
Conclusions: The framework developed represents a step towards closing the gap between the skills medical students are taught and the skills required of academic physicians. The model was customized to the context of the current organization and included a future orientation and addressed the literature calling for increasing focus on the administrative skills of academic physicians.
Disclosure statement
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.
Glossary
Competence: Possession of a satisfactory level of relevant knowledge and acquisition of a range of relevant skills that include interpersonal and technical components at a certain point in the educational process. Such knowledge and skills are necessary to perform the tasks that reflect the scope of professional practices. Competence may differ from “performance”, which denotes actions taken in a real life situation. Competence is therefore not the same as “knowing” on the contrary, it may well be about recognizing one's own limits. The more experienced the professional being tested, the more difficult it is to create a tool to assess their actual understandings and the complex skills of the tasks they undertake. A holistic integration of understandings, abilities and professional judgments, i.e. a “generic” model, is one where competence is not necessarily directly observable, but rather can be inferred from performance.
Wojtczak, A. (2003) Glossary of Medical Education Terms. AMEE Occasional Paper No 3. Dundee: AMEE.
Academic Physician: Refers to a physician with an academic appointment in a medical school or an academic medical center. The academic physician role is complex encompassing multiple simultaneous roles of teaching, research, patient care, and administration. Academic physicians educate and train the next generation of physicians, conduct and lead research and clinical studies, provide care for patients and translate advances in biological fields into medical practice, and play leadership roles in professional groups, government, and industry. Their academic appointments differ in that they can serve such functions as dean, academic department head, clinical department head, associate professor, or assistant professor.
Dill, D. (2012). Professional settings for the academic physician. In W. C.McGaghie, &J. J. Frey (Eds.). Handbook for the academic physician(3-10). New York: Springer Science & Business Media.
Wilson, A. (2007). Are Australasian academic physicians an endangered species? Internal Medicine Journal, 37(11), 778-781.
Notes on contributors
Lina Daouk-Öyry, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business of the American University of Beirut and the Director of the Evidence-based Healthcare Management Unit at the Faculty of Medicine of the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Ghazi Zaatari, MD, is a professor and the chairperson of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Tina Sahakian, MA, is a researcher at the Evidence-based Healthcare Management Unit at the Faculty of Medicine of the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Boushra Rahal Alameh, MpH, EMBA, is an academic affairs coordinator at the Department of Post Graduate Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Nabil Mansour, MA, is an executive officer and HR specialist at the Department of Post Graduate Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.