Creating a medical education enterprise: leveling the playing fields of medical education vs. medical science research within core missions

Background: Unlike publications of medical science research that are more readily rewarded, clinician-educators’ scholarly achievements are more nebulous and under-recognized. Objective:Create an education enterprise that empowers clinician-educators to engage in a broad range of scholarly activities and produce educational scholarship using strategic approaches to level the playing fields within an organization. Design: The authors analyzed the advantages and disadvantages experienced by medical science researchers vs. clinician educators using Bolman and Deal’s (B&D) four frames of organization (structural, human resource, political, symbolic). The authors then identified organizational approaches and activities that align with each B&D frame and proposed practical strategies to empower clinician-educators in their scholarly endeavors. Results: Our medical education enterprise enhanced the structural frame by creating a decentralized medical education unit, incorporated the human resource component with an endowed chair to support faculty development, leveraged the political model by providing grant supports and expanding venues for scholarship, and enhanced the symbolic frame by endorsing the value of education and public recognition from leaderships. In five years, we saw an increased number of faculty interested in becoming clinician-educators, had an increased number of faculty winning Educational Awards for Excellence and delivering conference presentations, and received 12 of the 15 college-wide awards for educational scholarship. These satisfactory trends reflect early success of our educational enterprise. Conclusions: B&D’s organizational frames can be used to identify strategies for addressing the pressing need to promote and recognize clinician-educators’ scholarship. We realize that our situation is unique in several respects, but this approach is flexible within an institution and transferable to any other institution and its medical education program. Abbreviations: B&D: Bolman and Deal; CRIS: Center for Research, Innovation, and Scholarship; OOR: Office of Research