Factors chosen by department chairs as important to family medicine.

Objective: Family medicine faces significant challenges and opportunities in the next 20 years. This study was conducted to determine the importance of departmental factors to the discipline as perceived by the departmental chairs.

Methods: Following brainstorming of 139 potential important factors, items were grouped into 81 clusters. All 120 family medicine departmental chairs were surveyed as to the importance of each to the discipline. The 81 items were empirically grouped into 9 areas and differences in rankings were analyzed using Friedman's Test.

Results: Fifty-eight (48%) of the chairs responded. Although 35 (43%) of the items received a mean rating of 4.0 or higher, teaching and patient care items were among the highest rated. Research and fellowship items were among those receiving the poorest ratings. Of the 9 areas, teaching and faculty issues were ranked significantly higher and fellowships ranked significantly lower than other areas (F = 183.5, p < .001).

Conclusion: Although responding departmental chairs felt that many of the items were important, teaching and faculty issues were ranked as the most important areas to the discipline while fellowships was ranked least important.