Compensation for teaching in critical care

Objectives: To determine the financial or nonclinical time critical care pr ogram directors or teaching faculty members receive as compensation for the ir educational activities. To compare compensation types and amounts among critical care specialties and between university vs. nonuniversity sponsori ng institutions. Data Sources and Extraction: Survey returns (46%) from critical care fellow ship directors listed in the American Medical Association Graduate Medical Education Directory. Information was stratified according to fellowship spe cialty and type of sponsoring hospital and compared by chi-square analysis and the Kruskal-Wallis test. Conclusions: Most program directors (77%) and faculty (82%) receive no spec ified compensation for education-related activities. Multidisciplinary prog rams are more likely to compensate faculty members than other specialty-spe cific programs (p =.006). Most programs sponsored by university or military /federal hospitals do not provide specified compensation (79% and 100%, res pectively). Overall, community hospital-based programs provide a greater pe rcentage of compensation to directors and faculty than university programs (for directors, p = .02; odds ratio, 3.85; for faculty, p = .001; odds rati o, 8.4). When compensation is specified, it is most often financial and it averages 18% of the salary (range, 5% to 100%) for directors and 19% of the salary for faculty (range, 5% to 50%), When reduced clinical time is provi ded (5% of program directors, 2% of faculty), it averages 13% (range, 8% to 18%) for directors and 18% (range, 10% to 25%) for faculty. Alternative me thods for assigning educational compensation are discussed.