Abstract
Academic surgeons provide tremendous value to institutions including notoriety, publicity,
cutting-edge clinical advances, extramural funding, and academic growth and development.
In turn, these attributes may result in improved reputation scores and hospital or
medical center rankings. While many hospital systems, schools of medicine, and departments
of surgery claim to have a major commitment to academic surgery and research, academic
surgeons are often undercompensated compared to clinically focused counterparts. Existing
salary benchmarks (e.g., the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) or the Association
of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)) are often used but are imperfect. Thus, the value
proposition for academic surgeons goes beyond compensation and often includes protected
time for academic pursuit, nonsalary financial support, and other intangible benefits
to being associated with a major academic center (e.g., abundance of scientific collaborators,
infrastructure for grant management). As a result, institution-specific practices
have developed and academic surgeons are left to negotiate salary support including
bonus structures, protected time, and recruitment packages on a case-by-case basis
without a clear roadmap. A diverse panel representing a range of academic surgical
experiences was convened at the 2022 Academic Surgical Congress to illuminate this
complex, often stress-inducing, aspect of an academic surgeon's professional career.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 20, 2023
Accepted:
December 25,
2022
Received in revised form:
December 15,
2022
Received:
December 7,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
