Criteria for the academic promotion of medical school-based psychiatrists.

The objective of this study was to identify criteria used in recommending faculty for promotion in medical school-based departments of psychiatry. Chairs of 125 departments in the United States were asked to complete a 39-item questionnaire on departmental demographics and the expectations for academic performance of tenure-track, non-tenure-track, part-time, and medical research faculty. Different criteria were reported for the classifications of faculty studied, but not for promotion of the same class of faculty to different academic ranks. The increasing need for faculty to generate revenue blurs the distinction between tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty and calls into question whether tenure track can practically continue as a faculty classification.