APGO

Sharon T. Phelan, MD

Yolanda Gener, DMD, Anne M. Fullilove, MIS, Drake T. Rayburn, Ronald M. Schrader, PhD, William F. Rayburn, MD, MBA

Objective: Promotion is an important measure of a department’s success attracting, nurturing, and retaining faculty who contribute to the department’s teaching, scholarly, patient care, and service missions. The objective of this study was to examine promotion rates of physician faculty members in general obstetrics and gynecology.

Methods: Data were collected annually by the Association of American Medical Colleges between 1980 and 2009 for first-time assistant professors and associate professors to determine whether and when they were promoted. Data about full-time physician faculty (MD; DO; MD, PhD) were aggregated in decade cohorts (1980-89, 1990-99, 2000-09). Numbers of promoted faculty were gathered from those retained in academia for each of the first 10 years. The data underwent discrete time survival analysis.

Results: Promotion rates within each group by the end of 10 years ranged from 25.8% to 46.7% for assistant professors and 25.5% to 40.5% for associate professors. Faculty in general obstetrics and gynecology had a consistently lower probability of promotion compared with the subspecialties. The most common time for promotion was at years 6 and 7 at either level. Faculty in the tenure track had higher and earlier promotion probabilities than in the non-tenure track. Regardless of track, male faculty had higher promotion probabilities with an earlier peak than females. For faculty promoted to the professor level, males in the tenure track had considerably higher promotion rates than the other three groups (male non-tenure track; female tenure track; female non-tenure track). The decade in which promotion was being considered did not make a difference after accounting for other factors.

Conclusion: Rates of promotion and time until promotion for faculty in general obstetrics and gynecology did not change significantly during the past 30 years, were lower than faculty in the subspecialties, and were highest among men on the tenure track.