ESPITE WIDESPREAD ACknowledgment of the importance of improved patientphysician communication, 1,2 teaching of communications skills has not been systematically integrated into most medical school curricula 3,4 and has not been subjected to evaluation across different schools. 5 Furthermore, few standardized assessment instruments specifically measure students' communications performance. [6][7][8] METHODS InterventionThree medical schools-New York University, University of Massachusetts, and Case Western Reserve Universityinitiated a curriculum in 2000-2001 to teach a common set of communications competencies during the third clerkship year, based on an established educational model. Although implementation at the 3 schools reflected differences in their culture, history, and curricular organization, the interventions shared 4 common characteristics. First, they used a documented model for teaching communications skills 9,10 that relies on experiential teaching modes;

The chairs universally acknowledged the existence of barriers to the advancement of women and proposed a spectrum of approaches to address them. Individual interventions, while adapting faculty to requirements, also tend to preserve existing institutional arrangements, including those that may have adverse effects on all faculty. Departmental or school-level changes address these shortcomings and have a greater likelihood of achieving enduring impact.

The current and projected nurse faculty shortage threatens the capacity to educate sufficient numbers of nurses for meeting demand. As part of an initiative to foster strategies for expanding educational capacity, a survey of a nationally representative sample of 3,120 full-time nurse faculty members in 269 schools and programs that offered at least one prelicensure degree program was conducted. Nearly 4 of 10 participants reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, and one third expressed an intent to leave academic nursing within 5 years. Major contributors to burnout were dissatisfaction with workload and perceived inflexibility to balance work and family life. Intent to leave was explained not only by age but by several potentially modifiable aspects of work, including dissatisfaction with workload, salary, and availability of teaching support. Preparing sufficient numbers of nurses to meet future health needs will require addressing those aspects of work-life that undermine faculty teaching capacity.