Volunteer Faculty

[fedor]

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What is the scoop on volunteer faculty / clinical professors?

Are they private practice docs who seek a university title to help their practice? If I'm not mistaken, they receive no compensation from the medical school and in return receive few privileges (library access, etc.) besides the title.

What is the difference between a clinical professor and a clinical instructor? Normally in academia, the difference between an instructor and a professor is the lack of tenure track. However, since clinical professors aren't on a tenure track anyways, it seems the clinical instructor position is a bit odd.

In economics, for example, the non-tenure track professors tend be on average less able than the tenure track professors. Is it the same among the medical faculty?

 

[fedor]

Any thoughts?

 

[docB]

I think most docs that do it do it for good reasons. Help out the field, they like teaching but don't want to work in academia, etc. I've never seen anyone who was doing it to pad a resume although I suppose someone might.

I don't know that this is a rock solid rule but in my experience clinical instructors are people who have valuable input but can't be called professors in a given clinical department. For example (and I'm not trying to annoy anyone and I'm not implying that these people are not worthy of professorships, I'm just noting that they may be excluded by a given institution's bylaws) pharmacists, psychologists, EMS providers, etc.

 

[fedor]

I think most docs that do it do it for good reasons. Help out the field, they like teaching but don't want to work in academia, etc. I've never seen anyone who was doing it to pad a resume although I suppose someone might.

I don't know that this is a rock solid rule but in my experience clinical instructors are people who have valuable input but can't be called professors in a given clinical department. For example (and I'm not trying to annoy anyone and I'm not implying that these people are not worthy of professorships, I'm just noting that they may be excluded by a given institution's bylaws) pharmacists, psychologists, EMS providers, etc.

Thanks for the reply, docB.

It's strange since I recently heard of a clinical instructor who is board certified in neurology and has a private practice in neurology. All the other clinical neurologists at that medical school were either clinical professors or clinical assistant professors. Your explanation makes perfect sense except it doesn't explain this one interesting exception.

 

[NR117]

Fedor, "clinical instructor" title is the most junior academic title, followed by lecturer (in some universities), assistant and associate professor, etc. If the neurologist you mention looks like he finished his training quite sometime ago, it's possible that he has part-time academic affilliation and though that allows him to participate in medical student and resident teaching, he likely never pursued academic promotion.