Linking excellence in teaching to departments' budgets

It is time for the research and clinical practice communities, which dominate medical schools, to realize that the enhanced support of teaching is essential not only for students and society but also because these communities' successes hinge on how well their investigators and clinicians were taught. The need to learn more about the evaluation of teaching should not be a barrier to the productive use of current knowledge about it, which is sufficient for schools to improve the standing and effectiveness of teaching. A greater focus on teaching is even more urgent now because the disbursement of medical school funding is changing, and fewer funds are being allowed for the use of education. Also, other pressures, such as greater demands on faculty time for research and patient care activities and the tendency for research and clinical care to evolve into autonomously governed activities, are distracting faculty from teaching. To establish a superior ethos for education, the author proposes a new approach to faculty compensation and advancement, in which half of the available resources would be distributed according to departmental merit, which would link compensation to the performance of the faculty group composing a department. Performance in both research and teaching in all venues of medical work would be weighed equally. The dean's office would be responsible for making departmental merit awards, using advice and information from faculty, students, and administrative staff, and all decisions would be reviewed with each department chair.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)