Defining the Director of Education in hospital medicine: A cross-sectional descriptive study

Hospital medicine (HM) groups must balance an expanding clinical enterprise with their educational mission. In response, many have established the role of Director of Education (DOE) to lead and support educational efforts. The structure, expectations, and impact of this role remain poorly defined.

To characterize the current landscape of the DOE role, including prevalence, funding, responsibilities, and evaluation strategies.

We conducted a cross-sectional survey of hospitalists serving as DOEs or HM leaders familiar with the role at a sample of highly ranked academic HM groups.

Of 50 HM groups surveyed, 31 responded (62% response rate). Overall, 68% (21/31) of respondents reported having a DOE, with 76% (16/21) of DOEs receiving FTE support. Eighty-one percent (17/21) of DOEs lacked performance metrics. All DOEs held concurrent leadership roles in undergraduate or graduate medical education or within hospital medicine. The most cited goals of the educational mission were improving teaching quality (76%, 16/21), mentoring HM faculty educators (67%, 14/21), and expanding HM faculty teaching opportunities (57%, 12/21). Core responsibilities included developing internal HM education-related faculty development (100%), liaising with UME, GME, and CME leadership (71%, 15/21), and leading strategic planning to integrate learners into clinical services (57%, 12/21). Among institutions without a DOE, key barriers included lack of precedent (70%, 7/10), distributed responsibilities (60%, 6/10), and insufficient funding (60%, 6/10).

The DOE plays a key role in aligning educational priorities with clinical operations within academic HM groups, with responsibilities spanning strategic planning, program development, and faculty support.