Advice for clinician educators

Not long ago, the idea of making education the focus of an academic career in neurology would have been heretical. Many of us were taught that to be an academic neurologist, anything less than a triple threat—a master clinician, teacher, and researcher—was unacceptable. For a variety of reasons, the triple threat is no longer maintained as a universal ideal, and academic neurologists whose focus is education (typically referred to as clinician–educators) have gained respectability. This career path remains a little out of the mainstream, however, and it is less standardized than the traditional academic path focusing on research. Educational productivity is harder to measure than research and clinical productivity. The metrics by which research is judged—publications, citations, and external support— do not apply to teaching. Unlike clinical activity and research activity, teaching activity is divorced from a direct revenue stream in most academic medical centers. Different medical centers and different departments have approached these issues in various ways, so it is difficult to offer specific career advice that would be pertinent in all settings, but some broad principles apply. In this article, I offer some general advice and observations for neurologists hoping to develop a career focusing on education.