<p>Obviously one needs an MD. But, what other things do medical schools look for when hiring MD's to teach their clinical clerkships?</p>
<p>Hubbells Dad(Clinical Professor of Neurology) responds:</p>
<pre><code> There are several types of clinical professors-both paid and non-paid positions. The paid position is a formal tenure track position at a medical school where the school separates the research track physicians(those that compete for grants and do little formal clinical work) from the pure clinical track positions(who perform little or no research and primarily see patients, take call, oversee residents and students). Promotions can be harder to come by in the pure cliinci\al track and because of pay discrepancies(compared to private practice), they can be harder to fill. At my medical school, they are filled with older physicians who have other souces of income from prior work histories(one is retired from the Mayo clinic and moved here because of the weather, but still wanted to do some work, and several retired military physicians-who have nice pensions, but are still in the early fifties and did not want to go into private practice).
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<p>The non-paid clinical professors are both community physicians and physicians from local private and military hospitals who accept academic appointments in exchange for teaching residents and students who rotate with them at the hospital or practice. The get to to teach and have an academic appointment on their CV and the school gets 'free' teaching from experinced physicinas. It's a win-win, but it can be time intensive. I went from the non-paid position(when I was active duty) to the paid, tenure track position when I retired, It's very nice.</p>
<p>NCG,</p>
<p>NJ_mother and her hubby are profs on medical faculty of UMDNJ. Try emailing her. She might be able to give you some insights as well.</p>
<p>Interesting. I had not heard of tenure track clinical professors. At the places I have worked tenure is for those who primarily do research, and do so at a very high level. They will not tenure clinical people because the incomes are higher, and depend entirely on how much clinical work someone does. The fear is that tenuring clinical people takes away their incentive to do a lot of clinical work. Since they are not doing academic work, they do not need the protections of academic freedom, which is the point of tenure.</p>
<p>For the most part, physicians who teach in the clinical clerkships are simply faculty members. So they are hired based on clinical ability, academic potential (if that counts for the particular job), collegial behavior, unique skills, and of course demand for their clinical services.</p>
<p>For those who are essentially in private practice and who come by to teach an occasional conference, but not to do clinical work at the medical school, the med school looks for someone who is willing to come in at times that fit with the schedules of the residents, and who appears to be a good teacher.</p>