The view of surgery department chairs on part time faculty in academic practice: results of a national survey

Background: Reduced resident work hours sparked debate regarding lifestyle of clinical faculty. We hypothesized surgery department chairs would not be supportive of part-time clinical faculty (PTF) and would be reluctant to grant requests to reduce total institutional commitment (TIC) or total professional effort. Method: A 16-question survey was mailed to 202 surgery chairs requesting department demographics, and perception of PTF. Chairs were given the option of identifying themselves. PTF referred to full-time equivalent clinicians who reduce their TIC for personal/family reasons and did not include clinicians with research or teaching commitments limiting clinical responsibilities. Results: A total of 112 of 186 (61.2%) delivered surveys were returned. Of these, 48.2% of respondents indicated clinicians had requested reduced TIC and 40.2% of departments had PTF. Only 1 chair was unable to grant a request to reduce TIC. A total of 42.8% of respondents indicated that PTF receive reduced salary-linked benefits but (58.9%) no change in either academic status or (52.7%) eligibility for promotion/tenure. The percentage of women faculty was 12.0% in departments with PTF and 10.5% in departments without PTF. A total of 42.8% of chairs agreed facilitating PTF would improve faculty retention versus 24.1% who disagreed (P < .0001). When compared with departments without PTF, chairs with PTF were more supportive that facilitating PTF would improve faculty retention (53.3% vs 32.7%, P < .001) and would be beneficial to their departments (57.8% vs 22.4%, P < .001). Sixty-two percent of respondents volunteered their names and contact information for follow-up. Conclusions: Contrary to our hypothesis, surgery department chairs appear to be supportive of PTF and were interested in discussing this further.