A system of recognition for excellence in medical teaching

Abstract

Many activities compete for the time of the busy academic clinician. Patient care naturally comes first, but the priority given to other activities depends upon incentives and at present teaching is losing ground to research. A major advantage that research has over teaching is the ability to put an internationally identifiable mark of ability into the CV, in the form of a publication list. Teaching activity lacks an internationally recognized method of assessment, other than recommendations by referees, which are not reliable. A simple scheme is suggested, which seeks to redress the balance by creating an internationally recognized measurement of teaching ability, for which the term International Medical Education Credits (IMECs) is proposed. The scheme has the following three main components: first, a measure of the true amount of time devoted to teaching; second, a measure of the quality of teaching as perceived by the recipients; third, a system for ensuring international comparability by enhancing the role of the external examiner and the formation of an International Association of External Examiners to oversee the scheme is proposed.