Novel full-time equivalent-support program receives rave reviews among core faculty
Key takeaways:
- Results recommend providing 0.1 FTE support to subspecialty fellowship core faculty to incentivize faculty involvement.
- Researchers plan to expand their research across multiple institutions to confirm findings.
A 0.1 full-time equivalent-supported core faculty program led to the most fellows and faculty reporting improvements in job satisfaction and an increased sense of involvement in the fellowship program, according to survey results.
The findings, published in Journal of Cancer Education, specifically showed an increase in core faculty involvement in fellowship education and recruitment, researchers concluded.
‘Unintended consequences’
“In 2022, the American Council for Graduate Medical Education [ACGME] began recommending that core faculty in medical subspecialty fellowships receive a minimum of 0.1 full-time equivalent [FTE] to support their educational and administrative responsibilities, with an initial plan to begin enforcing compliance in July 2023,” Ayesha Butt, MBBS, internal medicine resident physician at Yale New Haven Hospital, told Healio. “However, early feedback from thought leaders within the internal medicine community raised concerns about potential unintended consequences of these FTE requirements.
“The ACGME later announced that further changes would be formalized over the 2022–2023 winter, with an expected effective date of July 2024. At the time, there were no published data exploring compensation models for educational efforts of core faculty, as few training programs had implemented such initiatives. The timing of the proposed changes to the subspecialty program requirements created an urgent need to understand the potential impact that providing FTE support for core faculty in medical subspecialty fellowships might have.”
Researchers sought to assess perceptions of providing FTE support at Yale University. They distributed surveys to all core faculty in 2021 and 2022 and to hematology and medical oncology fellows in 2021.
Program feedback
As a result of the FTE-supported program, 83.3% of respondents reported improved job satisfaction and an increased sense of involvement in the hematology and oncology fellowship program.
Researchers also found that respondents increased participation in recruitment and attendance at fellowship conferences, as well as devoted more time to mentoring others.
In addition, core faculty reported via free text comments that they felt rewarded, the support program provided them with “a sense of commitment to the fellowship” and the program “helped offset clinical requirements.”
Hematology and oncology fellows reported that new program had “a positive impact” and that faculty was “more present at lectures.”
Researchers also observed an increase in the median number of times faculty made themselves available to interview fellowship applicants after the program was introduced.
“Our study findings support the ACGME’s original recommendation to provide 0.1 FTE support to subspecialty fellowship core faculty as a means of incentivizing involvement of faculty with the fellowship program’s teaching mission, facilitating mentorship of fellows and augmenting faculty involvement in fellowship recruitment,” Butt said.
Regarding hematology and medical oncology fellowship programs, the ACGME recently posted new Common Program Requirements in Hematology and Medical Oncology for online review and commentary that include recommendations regarding institutional FTE support as a function of the total number of core faculty, Butt added.
“While not final, the new ACGME proposal is in keeping with our study’s findings in recognizing the efforts of core faculty through the provision of FTE support. However, the amount of FTE support in ACMGE’s new proposal is substantially less than the 0.1 FTE-per-[core faculty] support initially recommended by ACGME and adopted by our own hematology and medical oncology fellowship program,” she said.
Moreover, Butt said the ACGME’s new proposal recommends that allocation of institutional FTE support for core faculty be decided by each fellowship program without specifying whether such support should necessarily be given to core faculty themselves.
“If the ACGME’s proposed recommendations are formally adopted, the findings from our study would argue that core faculty in hematology and medical oncology fellowship programs should be the direct beneficiaries of any amount of institutional FTE support, in order to recognize, reward and incentivize their efforts in education and mentorship and offer resource protection for those efforts to continue,” she said.
Future research
Plans for future research include carrying out the study to multiple institutions, according to Butt.
“Our current study is a single institution study, and so we aim to expand our future research at both the fellowship and residency level to better understand the impact of providing FTE support at different institutions and academic levels, and help guide future policy changes affecting the future of graduate medical education in the U.S.,” she said. “[In addition, although] we did not find any specific findings pertaining to women faculty, this will definitely be an interesting and important area for future research.”
For more information:
Ayesha Butt, MBBS, can be reached at ayesha.butt@yale.edu.
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