A Review of Performance Evaluation Paradigms Involving Practice Faculty

Objectives

This article aimed to identify, review, and summarize the literature broadly related to practice faculty evaluations, and provide recommendations for developing equitable systems that recognize and value diverse contributions across the 4 mission areas of practice, teaching, research, and service.

Findings

Practice contributions are often evaluated using ill-defined and highly variable approaches, with surveys reporting that half of pharmacy schools have written policies for evaluating practice contributions. From our review of the literature, performance evaluations of teaching are primarily focused on didactic teaching. Performance evaluations of research are misaligned with faculty job descriptions and primarily focus on grants, contracts, and publications, with faculty perceiving research as more valued than other mission areas. Service contributions are perceived to be overlooked and difficult to describe and measure. Dissatisfaction with performance evaluations and distribution of rewards is reported in the literature, along with implications for productivity, turnover, and burnout.

Summary

Practice faculty are essential for preparing future pharmacists. Performance evaluation criteria for practice faculty are commonly vague, inconsistent, and misaligned with position responsibilities, leading to unclear expectations, job dissatisfaction, and turnover. This is a complex and long-established challenge that the pharmacy Academy should address.