The UAB Medicine Faculty Engagement Survey results are critically important to the organization as the results represent the collective perceptions of the entire faculty. Therefore, on behalf of entire UAB Medicine leadership, I want to thank everyone who took the time to complete the survey, thereby creating an extremely valuable data set.

In this summary, I will provide an overview of the results of the 2017 survey that includes some of the overall results that we track, as well as updates in specific areas where we have been focused. I’ll also share areas where your comments suggests are areas senior leadership can focus for improved faculty experience.

Overall results

This year, 1,175 faculty members (69 percent) participated in the UAB Medicine Faculty Engagement Survey, a decrease from last year. One contribution to this drop in participation is that two other significant institutional surveys were being conducted at the same time. Conversations are planned to explore the possibility of doing a single, integrated survey in the future or at least to better coordinate scheduling so there will be less confusion.

Overall the faculty engagement index is 4.19 (72^nd percentile), which is an improvement from last year. The faculty alignment index is 4.04 (99^th percentile) which is a measure of the significant impact of the School of Medicine department chairs on the faculty experience.  

Two new items were added this year in regards to the effectiveness of the Dean’s Leadership team. The first item asked if the Dean’s Leadership team is effectively advancing the mission of the medical school, and a majority of the faculty affirmed that this was the case.  The second item dealt specifically with communication from the Dean’s Office. Overall the faculty feedback indicated that the office is good at communicating out but could improve by listening better to faculty as programs are planned and implemented. We will be exploring this aspect of communication more with the Faculty Advisory Group.

Focus Areas

These areas where leadership has been focused included stress reduction, promotion of well-being and enhancing satisfaction with mentorship.

This year, UAB Medicine leadership asked two questions largely related to stress and the consequences of stress: 

1. “I feel burned out from my work”: 32 percent report OK; 29 percent report neutral; 39 percent report unacceptable. This degree of burnout is concerning, and we continue to include this question in future surveys to track our efforts to mitigate it.
2. “The amount of job stress I feel is reasonable”: 53 percent report OK; 25 percent report neutral; 21 percent report unacceptable. Because the leadership has asked this question every year, we know that this result is an improvement from previous years although still not where we would like it to be.

A major stressor for faculty is access to child development programs. Some progress has been made in this through a collaborative effort between UAB and UAB Medicine, and leadership will continue to work on improved overall access with a specific focus on extended hours care.

The Faculty Well-being Task Force led by Dr. Seth Landefeld, chair of the Department of Medicine, has generated recommendations regarding faculty well-being initiatives that are now under final revision.  You’ll be hearing more about those in the coming weeks and months.

Mentorship satisfaction is up overall this year from last, but there was considerable variation between departments.  A group from the Healthcare Leadership Academy completed a critical assessment on mentorship within UAB Medicine that you can read here, and there are several resources available from the Faculty Career Resource Office to improve mentorship satisfaction.

Areas for improvement

This year, faculty were asked where leadership should focus in their continued efforts to make UAB Medicine the preferred place for faculty to work, which is our stated organizational goal. While many faculty members affirmed that this was already the case for them, there were many suggestions in the 829 responses for how UAB Medicine could be better.  

There were quite a number for suggestions for improvement in all of the systems that are in place to support our research and patient care efforts. The results and comments have been transmitted to the appropriate UAB and UAB Medicine programmatic leaders. Additionally, individual department chairs can access their own results to see which aspects of these programs are most negatively affecting the faculty members in their groups and can focus their attentions on those particular areas.

The Electronic Medical Record had the highest levels of unacceptable feedback from faculty, with 102 comments specifically about system improvements, software improvements and frustrations about clerical duties being assigned to physicians and other clinicians. These concerns have been sent to the Joint Operating Leadership and to leaders of the UAB Medicine Electronic Health Care Task Force, led by Reid Jones and Dr. Bill Carroll, which has been actively working to improve this system.  

Another area for improvement this year is compensation. Faculty responses overall indicate that you feel compensation is fair compared to similar academic institutions. However, some faculty members are expressing that the funds flow model has placed too much emphasis on clinical productivity with the consequence of disadvantaging the teaching mission. Another particular concern is that UAB Medicine leadership hasn’t determined the best mechanism to allow clinical faculty appropriate involvement in enterprise decision making. The newly named Chief Physician Executive is already having conversations with physician faculty and administrative leadership to begin to explore how we can improve this area of faculty work.  

I have produced a narrated Power Point presentation that provides more details of the results of this year’s survey. If you have questions about the results from the survey or comments about the results, please email me at darogers@uab.edu. Thank you again for completing this year’s UAB Medicine Faculty Engagement Survey.