Should Medical Schools Stop Research and Dedicate Themselves Solely to Teaching?

Abstract

Medical school faculty spend a lot of time on research and this can distract them frommedical teaching. This is probably true, and yet it is an argument that has been made numerous times in the past. According to Graeme Catto, Bresearch interests of medical schools and their parent university may take precedence over teaching commitments and clinical duties^ [1]. Some would therefore say that schools should do less research and more teaching. The counterargument is that medical research is a core activity of medical schools—that it is impossible to envisage a medical school that is not undertaking research. This counterargument enumerates the multiple benefits of conducting research [2]. There are undoubtedly multiple benefits to conducting research—but it is questionable whether these genuinely benefit the school. In reality the Bbenefits^ to the school are limited in number and questionable in impact. In this short perspective, I make the case that research confers little benefit on schools and may actually cause harm. One of the commonly heard arguments for conducting research in medical schools is that this exposes medical learners to the most innovative minds in medicine. However, the reality is that this is often not the case. Active researchers have little time for teaching and often resent time that they must spend teaching. Researchers are also recruited for their research skills and not for their teaching skills. So, even some researchers who might want to pass on their ideas might not have the teaching skills to do this. Certainly, there is evidence that many faculty members are not always fully prepared for their teaching role [3]. However, there are a growing number of faculty development programmes for medical educators [4]. Nonetheless, even for researchers with good teaching skills, there is the inconvenient fact that their research subject might not be on the curriculum for medical students or even postgraduate learners. So their research subject might not be something that students should learn, and all educational activities in medical school are increasingly driven by curricula [5]. A second argument for making schools centres of research is an economic one. Research brings in huge funding to the school, and without this funding, schools would not be able to employ faculty or even survive [6]. It is certainly true that research does bring in funding; however, that funding is spent on research. Research funding bodies now monitor their spending carefully and must be reassured that their grants are spent on their intended purpose. Some research funding may help to cover the overhead or indirect costs of the institution—to cover real costs to the school to support the infrastructure required for research. These include costs incurred for accounting, human resources and payroll, and support for libraries, utilities, and facilities. Some of these costs benefit both the research and teaching missions of the school because both missions may be occurring in the same location. However, it remains clearly unacceptable for a research grant recipient to tell their funder that they are going to spend some money on teaching as the medical school needs it. Another problem with the economic argument is that it is questionable whether research funding actually pays for all the research at the institution or whether the research funding activities are actually loss making [7]. Certainly, there are cases where academics who are paid to do teaching actually end up doing research. Could the funding brought in to conduct research actually be worsening the financial performance of schools? The simple fact is that nobody knows. However, what is certain is that medical education is expensive and it * Kieran Walsh kmwalsh@bmjgroup.com