Faculty evaluations by general surgery residents suggest teaching performance improves with advancement in rank

Objective: Teaching requires an investment of considerable time. Given the progressively expanding demands of an academic surgical career it seems reasonable to assume attention devoted to teaching would diminish over time. We... [ view full abstract ]

Objective: Teaching requires an investment of considerable time. Given the progressively expanding demands of an academic surgical career it seems reasonable to assume attention devoted to teaching would diminish over time. We hypothesized that faculty teaching performance as measured by resident evaluations would decline with advancement in rank.

Methods:  Between 6/24/04 and 2/29/16, 52 surgical faculty at a single academic institution received anonymous resident evaluations at regular intervals. Using 10 questions on a four-point scale, faculty were evaluated on operative teaching, medical knowledge, patient care, and professionalism. Evaluations were de-identified and faculty were grouped by rank time of evaluation; an average performance score over time was compared using repeated measures mixed models and the Tukey Kramer test. Mean and standard deviation were calculated for age and years of practice at the institution. P value <0.05 determined significance.

Results: Over 8,400 evaluations were collected. 34% of the evaluations analyzed were of assistant professors, 28% associate professors, and 38% full professors. Full professors are evaluated significantly more favorably than assistant professors, specifically in clinical care (p=0.02), leadership (p<0.01), respect (p=0.04), ethics (p<0.01), knowledge of the surgical field (p<0.01), and healthcare systems (p<0.01). Operative teaching was not significant across faculty ranks. Overall, the difference between assistant and professor was significant (p=0.04). 

Conclusion: Resident evaluations of faculty teaching improve steadily with advancement in professorial rank.  These encouraging findings suggest that academic surgeons continue to place importance on resident education in spite of other increasing career demands.