Effect of resident evaluations of obstetrics and gynecology faculty on promotion

Promotion for academic faculty depends on a variety of factors, including their research, publications, national leadership, and quality of their teaching.

We sought to determine the importance of resident evaluations of faculty for promotion in obstetrics-gynecology programs.

A 28-item questionnaire was developed and distributed to 185 department chairs of US obstetrics-gynecology residency programs.

Fifty percent (93 of 185) responded, with 40% (37 of 93) stating that teaching has become more important for promotion in the past 10 years. When faculty are being considered for promotion, teaching evaluations were deemed "very important" 60% of the time for clinician track faculty but were rated as mainly "not important" or "not applicable" for research faculty. Sixteen respondents (17%) stated a faculty member had failed to achieve promotion in the past 5 years because of poor teaching evaluations. Positive teaching evaluations outweighed low publication numbers for clinical faculty 24% of the time, compared with 5% for research faculty and 8% for tenured faculty being considered for promotion. The most common reason for rejection for promotion in all tracks was the number of publications. Awards for excellence in teaching improved chances of promotion.

Teaching quality is becoming more important in academic obstetrics-gynecology departments, especially for clinical faculty. Although in most institutions promotion is not achieved without adequate research and publications, the importance of teaching excellence is obvious, with 1 of 6 (17%) departments reporting a promotion had been denied due to poor teaching evaluations.