"Ardor and diligence": Quantifying the faculty effort needed in emergency medicine graduate medical education

Regulatory requirements around protected faculty effort to support graduate medical education (GME) programs have changed. The amount of labor required to run a GME program is unknown. We sought to describe the work performed by program leadership and core faculty in emergency medicine (EM).

We performed a prospective survey study of core faculty in EM. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire followed by quarterly time surveys, covering activities in eight domains: evaluation, teaching and education, scholarly activity, service, interview/recruitment, clinical supervision, student responsibilities, and wellness and administration. We collected data from April 2022 to March 2023. We calculated descriptive statistics and used analyses of variance (ANOVA) to assess differences by faculty role and quarter.

A total of 596 physicians completed the demographic questionnaire and 347 (58.2%) completed at least one quarterly time survey including 142 (41%) females, 48 (14%) program directors (PDs), 84 (24%) assistant/associate program directors (APDs), and 215 (62%) general core faculty (GCF). The mean number of hours per week spent on nonclinical education work was 60 h for PDs, 47 h for APDs, and 44 h for GCF. ANOVA found significant differences in mean hours per week and faculty role in domains of evaluation (p < 0.001), service (p = 0.007), and interview/recruitment (p < 0.001). We detected differences in mean hours per week and quarter in domains of evaluation (p < 0.001), teaching and education (p < 0.001), interview and recruitment (p < 0.001), and clinical supervision (p < 0.001).

Running a residency program requires many hours of faculty work, which can vary based on faculty role and time of year. These results can inform decisions regarding faculty support.