I'll try to think of someone I can contact in Faculty Affairs to find out if research is required to get any sort of academic appointment. Based on my experience, my guess is yes, but if I find someone to ask, I will let you all know. At the very least, a research background will make you a much stronger candidate. At many universities in
ALL departments (not just the medical school and associated science departments), there is incredible pressure on the faculty to publish, publish, publish. Many faculty members are primarily in their positions because of the research, and consider teaching to be very secondary to their responsibilities.
In general, when you are talking about academic medicine, you are not saying "Doctors who teach med students and residents;" you are actually saying "Doctors who do research" (clinical, basic science, or a combination of the two). If you are doing clinical work at any "major" medical center or hospital, you will be teaching residents because you will most likely be their attending at one point or another.
Now, at least at Stanford, there were several different tracks in which you could seek appointment -- medical center line, university teaching line, etc. I'm assuming the set-up is similar at other universities, but I do not know for sure. Depending on where your interests lay (clinical practice, clinical research, basic science research, teaching, etc.) that would influence what type of appointment you were going for (ie, which track). Also, it would depend on what "billets" (essentially "openings") the given department had available, and had budgeted for, and where the salary support was coming from. Medical center line appointments were easier than university teaching/tenure line appointments because of the cost to the university (ie, tenure), and I believe that medical centers having serious financial difficulties tend to have fewer university teaching/tenure line appointments available -- they like to retire those billets to save money.
For those of you interested in pursuing academic medicine, but unsure about the research aspect, keep in mind that "research" does not necessarily mean having a lab. Many academic physicians are extremely active in research, but haven't set foot in a basic science research lab since undergrad or med school. All of their research comes about through clinical trials or studies. These can be investigator-initiated (you formulate the question, hypothesis, how it will be carried out, etc., and then submit your proposal to a sponsor for the funds), or they can be initiated by industry (pharmaceutical and biotech companies).
Finally, I took this url off of the Stanford website,
Faculty Handbook. This has a lot of explanation about the appointment process and the different lines. I haven't had time to read through all of it, but some of you may find it interesting or helpful.
By the way, all of the information I'm presenting is primarily based on my work experience in an academic office at Stanford Med Center, and having had to submit a medical center line appointment, in addition to the information I picked up in working with a bunch of different physicians during that time.