A Faculty Awards Program in an Academic Radiology Department: How We Do It

Abstract

INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION Our academic department’s faculty members engage in a variety of activities, including teaching, research, clinical service, community service, and administration. Until 2 years ago, teaching was the only activity that was publicly recognized through an annual teaching award, which was bestowed by the resident trainees at an end-of-the-year event for graduating senior residents. Otherwise, recognition for excellence in these various categories came mainly through the annual clinical faculty incentive program. No doubt, monetary compensation is a traditional method of encouraging behavior that contributes to the mission and goals of a department. However, such monetary recognition may be variably available in uncertain financial times. In addition, monetary compensation is a human resources matter and for various legal and ethical reasons tends to be confidential, and thus the encouragement and motivation for excellence that it provides do not extend easily beyond the individual. Finally, as with many clinical departments, our incentive program is limited in reach, as it targets physician faculty members only. Yet many employees value public recognition of their efforts and contributions. Indeed, it has been shown that employees “value highly personalized recognition for a job well done as a critical dimension of their reward system” [1] and that “fiscal rewards alone may not have a positive impact on the performance of academic radiologists” [2]. At one Canadian niversity, 93% of faculty members laced on a faculty honor list for educational excellence “valued the award highly, and 45% indicated the award inspired them to enhance the quality of their teaching” [3]. Such public recognition can encourage and motivate all employees to achieve the high standards such recognition demands and “fosters growth, transformation and performance of organizations” [4]. Finally, recognition, particularly if it involves peer recognition, may be helpful in providing additional evidence of an individual’s capabilities and may influence academic promotion committees [5]. Therefore, we developed and implemented a program to recognize our faculty members in several endeavors outside teaching. In this brief article, we detail how we initiated this program and how we maintain it annually.