Chairpersons' opinions regarding quality control of surgical faculty performance in Japanese academic surgery departments

BACKGROUND: The governance and power structure of the department of surgery depends to a large extent on the chairperson's decisions in Japanese medic al schools. This paper reports the current collective opinions of surgery d epartment chairpersons regarding the quality assessment of surgical faculty performance. METHODS: Surveyed were 78 chairpersons of general surgery departments from 72 Japanese medical schools. Chairpersons were questioned about administrat ive and organizational decision making: rank order requirements for full-ti me surgical faculties, coordination of staff for surgical operations, and p erformance outcome measures. RESULTS: In all, 68 (87%) chairpersons responded. When selecting surgical f aculties, publishing competence (45%) and collaborative personality (44%) w ere the two foremost concerns of chairpersons. Teaching experience (0%) and board certification (2%) showed the lowest rate for the first priority amo ng the 6 elements listed. The operator was mainly decided by the chairperso n (63%) whereas the rest of the operative team members were decided by eith er the chairperson (28%), a specialty team (38%), or attending surgeons (32 %). Thirty-three chairpersons (49%) of 68 respondents used the morbidity an d mortality conference as the only available approach for assessing surgica l performance on a regular basis, whereas the remaining half did not have r outine outcome measures. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that surgery department cha irpersons deemed collaborative personality and publishing competence the tw o major requirements for candidates of surgical faculties. Although the mor bidity and mortality conference is currently the only available approach fo r assessing surgical performance, the majority of chairpersons felt that ou tcome measures should be based on more objective and structured criteria. ( C) 2000 by Excerpta Medica, Inc.