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  “Enhancing the productivity of faculty in academic medical departments is essential for improving their reputation and ensuring their growth.”

  Elie Akl

  Associate Professor, Schools of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and Public Health and Health Professions

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM

Published: June 21, 2012

Strategies introduced to assess—and reward—the productivity of faculty at academic medical centers in the U.S. do improve faculty research productivity, according to a systematic review recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Such strategies also may result in improved clinical productivity, the study found; however, their impact on teaching productivity is far less clear.

“When strategies are introduced to assess productivity as part of a compensation scheme, they appear to improve faculty productivity in research activities,” says Elie A. Akl, lead author and associate professor of medicine, family medicine and social and preventive medicine in the schools of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and School of Public Health and Health Professions. Akl also has an appointment at McMaster University.

“The data suggest that when faculty productivity is assessed in connection with an appropriate compensation or incentive scheme, the results can create positive cultural change within a department, helping it to achieve its mission,” says Akl.

The strategies may have had no apparent effect on teaching productivity, he explains, because there truly is no effect or because the studies included in this analysis were unable to detect one.

“Enhancing the productivity of faculty in academic medical departments is essential for improving their reputation and ensuring their growth,” says Akl. “This has become vital for survival amid current financial realities.”

He and his co-authors comprehensively and systematically reviewed the medical literature for studies that evaluated strategies to assess the productivity of faculty, ultimately analyzing the results of eight relevant studies.

“When these kinds of productivity assessments, coupled with compensation or incentive schemes, are introduced, we found that compensation increased at both group and individual levels, particularly among junior faculty,” he says.

In order to better understand whether and how departments of medicine in the U.S. are measuring and compensating the productivity of their faculty, Akl and his colleagues are planning a national survey of chairs of departments of medicine.

“We need higher-quality evidence about the potential benefits and harms of such assessment strategies,” he notes.

Akl’s co-authors on the study are from UB, McMaster University, the Regina Elena National Cancer Institute in Rome, the German Cochrane Center, the Institute of Biostatics and Medical Informatics and the University Medical Center at Freiberg. Funding was provided by the Regina Elena National Cancer Institute of Rome.