Milestones as a Faculty Development Tool for Career Academic Physicians

Background and Objectives: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has implemented milestones for progression of residents. Career academic physicians would benefit from similar concrete guidance for scholarly activity and faculty development. After developing milestones across six recognized competencies among our family medicine academicians, we acknowledged the potential benefit of expanding the development of milestones throughout the academic medical center. Methods: Milestones that we previously developed were modified by departmental leaders within our institution reflecting levels of career development based on benchmarks in each field. These objective measures for guiding maturation of clinical and academic skill sets were then circulated to clinicians in five residency programs throughout our academic medical center for self-evaluation. We analyzed the completed surveys to determine if an association exists between years in academics and rank across each area of competency. Results: We received fifty-three responses from the 91 faculty invited. We noted a significant association in the competency of medical knowledge with progression from assistant to full professor, and we noted a trend toward significance in professionalism and progression from assistant to full professor. These objective measures of clinician development and competency suggest association with levels of academic career development by rank within the institution. Conclusions: This rubric can be helpful for directing faculty development and faculty mentorship. These milestones are general enough that other physician specialties may be able to adopt them for their own needs.