Physician Assistant Program Director Opinions Regarding the Importance of Faculty Research and Publication

Factors Predicting Physician Assistant Faculty Intent to Leave

“…Additionally PA faculty may be ill-prepared by virtue of their training or the workload expectations of combined clinical-teaching practice to find time to engage in work required academic pursuits such as research and publication. Barriers to publication by PA faculty include time, resources, and support (Coniglio & Colletti, 2006;Hegmann & Dehn, 2006); and in a recent study Hegmann (2008) reported that almost three-quarters of all PA faculty had no peer-reviewed publications over the length of their careers. In a survey of PA academic leadership (deans and program directors) 58.7% of respondents rated scholarly activity as important for promotion considerations and 74.7% rated research and publication important for the profession, but only 23% thought allowing more time for research and publication was important for retention of faculty (Hegmann & Dehn, 2006).…”

“…Studies of PA faculty have been limited primarily to descriptive studies or bivariate correlations of PA faculty publishing patterns (Hegmann, 2008;Hegmann & Dehn, 2006; retirement intentions (Jones, Repka, Draper, & Orcutt, 2006), faculty benefits (Danielson, 2007) and burnout (Forister & Blessing, 2007). In a study of publishing history among doctorally prepared faculty, Orcutt and Gosdin (2005) did employ multiple regression analysis demonstrating that "years since degree awarded" and "total number of publications within one year of degree award" were positively related to total number of publications, and that their overall model "accounted for 68% of the variance in the total number of publications of PA faculty" (Orcutt & Gosdin, 2005, p 11).…”

“…Areas of study included publication history of doctorally-prepared PA faculty (Orcutt & Gosdin, 2005), opinions of PA program directors toward the importance of faculty participation in research and publication (Hegmann & Dehn, 2006), a benchmark of PA faculty scholarship activities (Hegmann, 2008), and a surveys of physician assistant faculty publishing patterns (Coniglio & Colletti, 2006;Hegmann, 2002;Jones, Cawley, & Capozzi, 1997).…”

“…58.7% of responding program directors believed, however, that research and publication for promotion; and 74.7% of respondents felt that research and publication were important for the profession. Barriers to research and publication were lack of time due to other responsibilities, lack of training in research design, and lack of experience (Hegmann & Dehn, 2006).…”

“…In 1997 Jones and colleagues (Jones, Cawley, & Capozzi, 1997) reported on data from a 1993-1994 survey of PA educators in which they noted found that 68.9% of respondents had not published in the past three years. Hegmann surveyed PA faculty in 2002, in a two-part descriptive study of PA program director opinions regarding the importance of faculty research and publication as described previously (Hegmann, 2006), and PA program faculty regarding 3-year and total publication history and perceived barriers. Results from the faculty survey revealed that 36.2% of respondents had published in peer-reviewed journals in the preceding 3 years, and that 39.6% of respondents had published in any format (journal articles, chapters, textbooks) in their careers (Hegmann, 2002).…”