Guiding Faculty Toward Their Aspirations

By: Julie Ann Freischlag, MD, Vice Chancellor for Human Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine at UC Davis Mentoring and elevating the next generation of faculty and physicians are two of the most important–and enjoyable–aspects of my career. Part of these efforts involves helping them find professional satisfaction and pursue their passions. I appreciated the article in the August issue by Jones et al, entitled “A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Motivations, Goals, and Aspirations of Male and Female Academic Medical Faculty,” because it sheds light on the desires faculty have around their careers, which impacts retention, recruitment, and institutional culture. The study showed that work/life balance was very important for both women and men. (Is 95.5% of women really that different from 90.5% of men who indicated that balancing work and other activities was important, even though it is statistically different?) This finding mirrors the results of the 2015 UC Davis Faculty Forward Survey, which demonstrated that our young male faculty are struggling with work/life balance as much as our young women faculty. Our male faculty indicated that they too want to spend quality time with their families and that their partners are busy. In the past, I think that only half as many men as women would have responded this way. This may be a reflection of the significant increase over the last half century in the number of women in the workforce. Compared to ...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective mentoring professional satisfaction wellbeing women in academic medicine work-life balance Source Type: blogs