Academic medicine has used part-time work schedules as a mechanism to recruit and retain high-quality faculty members, and part-time faculty members represent an important component of the faculty workforce at LCME-accredited U.S. medical schools. This Analysis in Brief reports on the state of faculty policies currently in place for part-time faculty work in U.S. medical schools.
Survey results show that definitions of part-time status differed markedly by institution. Results also show that while over three-quarters of U.S medical schools had defined faculty career tracks in place for their part-time basic science and clinical faculty members, slightly more than one-quarter of all the responding institutions had a written policy in place that articulated productivity and performance expectations for these faculty.
These findings suggest that opportunities for the clarification of productivity and performance expectations for these faculty members by individual schools exist, which could benefit the part-time faculty member who may be seeking guidance and could benefit the institution by establishing a standard approach and procedure to guide these appointments.