[The academic career of clinical teachers]

An important challenge for medical schools is to recognize and stimulate the academic career of its clinical faculty. These professionals are mainly dedicated to teaching activities and play a role in the modeling of its students. Therefore, they contribute to the development of medical education. The aim of this paper is to analyze the main features of this particular kind of academics and to stimulate physicians to embrace the teaching career. The development channels of teaching academic activity are direct teaching, curricular innovation and administration, counseling, clinical investigation, education administration, leadership and assessment of the learning process. We define each of these activities, giving examples of the activities that can be carried out and how to assess them.