Profession
Anatomy professor shortage
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted April 18, 2005
Medical schools nationwide are facing a shortage of qualified faculty to teach gross anatomy, according to an article in the April Academic Medicine. A 2002 survey found that more than 80% of medical school department chairs had difficulty recruiting faculty to teach the class.
One of the reasons, the authors said, is that potential instructors were avoiding teaching during their postdoctoral years because there is a perception that research contributions are valued over teaching efforts. There are enough qualified people in the pipeline to reverse the shortage, but the academic community needs to provide incentives to encourage new faculty members to teach gross anatomy when they make the transition from postdoctoral fellows to junior faculty members. An online abstract of the article is available. (link)
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/04/18/prbf0418.htm.
