Request a ConsultationCalendar of Events

The faculty of Mass General Brigham work tirelessly to support our mission by providing world-class care to our patients, performing innovative research, and teaching the next generation of clinical leaders. As Harvard Medical School faculty, our scholarly endeavors typically lead to commensurate recognition through the HMS promotion pathway. In many MGB departments, HMS ladder promotions are linked to leadership opportunities, promotions, and salary structures. However, many faculty who provide critical service to their departments, as well as to MGB’s clinical, educational, and operational missions, can find their contributions undervalued in the current system.

The MGB-AMC Clinical Faculty Promotion Pathway is designed to ensure that all faculty who contribute to the MGB mission have appropriate opportunities for career growth and recognition. For those departments that do not already have a clinical promotion process, and have faculty whose contributions may not be adequately recognized by the HMS promotion process, the MGB Clinical Faculty Promotion Pathway provides a valuable opportunity. The Clinical Faculty ladder titles are MGB Clinical Faculty Physician, MGB Senior Clinical Faculty Physician, and MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty Physician. This ladder reflects contributions to the mission of MGB, which often overlaps with that of Harvard Medical School.

This pathway is institutional and does not supplant or in any way change our affiliation with HMS. We expect that all MGB faculty, irrespective of whether they participate in this process, will continue to fully contribute to the HMS mission and pursue appropriate HMS promotions. We furthermore expect that many MGB faculty will not pursue this pathway, as the HMS ladder appropriately recognizes their accomplishments. We expect that those who do use this pathway will maintain their HMS appointment (for example, someone may be an HMS Assistant Professor and also an MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty Physician).

 

Candidates will be nominated by their departments with endorsement from their Chair. The nomination process will be designed to maximize the gathering of relevant, objective information while minimizing administrative burden on the nominee and recommenders. Rigorous assessment of candidates’ qualifications will occur through a Promotions Committee. The committee will consider:

  • Clinical Excellence
  • Clinical Reputation
  • Patient Experience
  • Support of colleagues and professional role modeling
  • Contributions to education, quality improvement, diversity, equity, and inclusion, innovation, and service/leadership at the divisional, departmental, institutional, and system level

 

The Promotions Committee will:

  • Consist of standing members and rotating members
  • Meet quarterly to review completed nomination packets circulated ahead of time
  • Notify candidates and Chairs of promotions
  • Provide feedback to candidates and their Chairs if promotion is not granted. There will be an appeals process (to be created).

 

A one-year initial slow rollout will launch September 1, 2024. Initially, 2- 4 volunteer MGB combined departments will be enrolled. Iterative changes and improvements will be incorporated over the course of the rollout. Anyone promoted along this pathway will keep their title even if there are later adjustments to the process or criteria. After the first year, the program will be assessed, and recommendations will be made about further refinement and expansion.


Criteria for Promotion

A candidate for promotion along the MGB Clinical Faculty Promotion Pathway must meet the following criteria:

  • Devotes at least 50% of their total time to clinical care, education, equity, or administrative endeavors
  • Meets all expectations for professional participation in the institution and department (e.g. participates in OPPE, works toward quality incentives, etc.)

 

With this pathway, we look to recognize those who provide truly superb clinical care while also contributing significantly to their teams, department, and the mission of the institution.  Candidates will therefore be assessed for:

  • Clinical excellence: Provision of high quality, evidence-based care that is recognized as such by patients and their department. At the MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty level, candidates are sought out to educate colleagues or to improve quality of care given their level of clinical excellence
  • Clinical reputation: Recognition as providing superb clinical care by peers in their department, and in the case of MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty candidates, by peers both within and outside their department
  • Team Support: Fostering the development and well-being of colleagues through support, teaching, mentoring, or team-based work
  • Professionalism: Role modeling professionalism for peers

 

Candidates for promotion to MGB Senior Clinical Faculty are expected to have made noteworthy contributions in at least one of the following domains of distinction. Candidates for promotion to MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty are expected to have made contributions in at least two, with leadership in at least one, of the following domains of distinction:

  • Education: Actively involved in education delivery, including direct teaching of learners, or developing educational tools or materials
  • Quality Improvement: Actively involved in improving person and team care delivery which may include leading quality improvement projects
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Actively involved in advancing DEI initiatives which may include mentorship of those underrepresented in medicine
  • Innovation: Actively involved in innovation to develop novel tools, therapeutics, systems, or approaches to positively impact our institution, patients, or workforce
  • Service and Leadership: Actively involved in administrative, committee, and leadership roles that guide advancement of the institutional mission

(Click here to enlarge the table below)









Materials for Promotion

The following materials are required for all candidates for consideration of promotion:

  • Current Harvard Medical School-format CV
  • Completion of a nomination form by the candidate’s Chair, their division chief, or a designee that includes basic information on FTE distribution and open response questions about the candidate’s contributions in each of the areas considered as part of the assessment
  • Attestation of support from candidate’s Chair if Chair is not completing the nomination
  • Suggested reviewers for 360 degree evaluations (see below)

 

For consideration of promotion to the level of MGB Senior Clinical Faculty Physician the following are required:

  • Evidence of patient experience of clinical care (for patient-facing specialties). This can be in the form of a patient letter, 360-degree evaluation, or the last year’s patient experience scores and comments. This will also be covered in the nomination form for the department to provide an assessment. For non-patient-facing specialties, the department should provide information on appropriate clinical metrics.
  • Four 360-degree evaluations from colleagues, at least one of which should come from outside the candidate’s own division (although may come from the same department)
  • Two 360-degree evaluations from students/trainees/mentees who have worked with the candidate in the last 3 years. Mentees do not have to be in the same field. 
  • Two 360-degree evaluations from staff colleagues
  • Candidate summary (paragraph) of contributions in at least one of the following domains of distinction: education, quality improvement, DEI, innovation, service/leadership

 

For consideration of promotion to the level of MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty Physician the following are required:

  • Evidence of patient experience of clinical care (for patient-facing specialties). This can be in the form of a patient letter, 360-degree evaluation, or the last year’s patient experience scores and comments. This will also be covered in the nomination form for the department to provide an assessment. For non-patient-facing specialties, the department should provide information on appropriate clinical metrics.
  • Four 360-degree evaluations from colleagues, at least two of which must come from outside the candidate’s own department
  • Two 360-degree evaluation from students/trainees/mentees who have worked with the candidate in the last three years
  • Three 360-degree evaluations from staff colleagues
  • Candidate summary (paragraph) of contributions in at least two of the following domains of distinction, with at least one including leadership contributions in the domain: education, quality improvement, DEI, innovation, service/leadership
Frequently Asked Questions

Will this promotion pathway substitute for the HMS promotion pathway?

  • The MGB-AMC Clinical Faculty Promotion Pathway is targeted to those who cannot reasonably be promoted, or continue to be promoted, under the traditional HMS pathway. We expect that departments will prioritize this pathway for those not meeting HMS promotion criteria.

Will this replace the process that some departments already have for clinical promotions?

  • This is a targeted option available to those departments that do not already have their own process or wish to join an institutional pathway.

Is this only for physician faculty?

  • Our expectation is to focus first on physicians. In the future, this process may expand to other role groups, perhaps by switching out the word “physician”: MGB Clinical Faculty [Physician], MGB Senior Clinical Faculty [Physician], and MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty [Physician]

Is this only for faculty at the Academic Medical Centers?

  • The first phase will be aimed at faculty from the AMCs. MGB may wish to offer a similar process across the enterprise, perhaps with “Adjunct” for the community sites, in a later phase.

Will faculty need to move linearly through the ladder, or can someone with 15 years of service be considered for appointment directly as an MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty Physician?

  • Faculty can be considered by the committee for a title at the appropriate ladder level from the start of this program and with new hires.

Why are there only three rungs of the ladder?

  • While HMS has four promotion ladder rungs, we are proposing three to best match the existing clinical promotion pathways of the Departments of Medicine at both AMCs and minimize administrative burden. Many AMCs that offer clinical promotion pathways similarly offer three ladder rungs.

How will Clinical Excellence be measured?

  • We anticipate that each department will have appropriate metrics to measure clinical excellence and will submit this information to support their candidate’s promotion. These should be different from the measures of clinical reputation.

Why are you using 360 reviews rather than letters of recommendation?

  • The use of short 360 reviews that are a mix of Likert scale and open-ended text questions is an effective way to lessen the burden by avoiding formal letter writing for those supporting a candidate, and to streamline the collection of data and the review process.

Will an HMS ladder appointment automatically confer an analogous rank on this ladder?

  • The current proposal targets those whose main contributions are through the clinical mission. Many existing, and outstanding, faculty with senior HMS appointments may not meet these criteria if they are mostly focused on other aspects of our mission such as research. An existing HMS ladder appointment certainly can be used to support a candidate’s appropriate MGB ladder appointment, when desired.

If a department that already has a clinical promotion process wishes to participate, can those ladder appointments be granted automatic appointment through this process?

  • The process that is used for promotion for departmental programs will be reviewed and if found to be reasonably analogous to the one proposed here, conversion of those appointments to appropriate MGB Clinical Faculty appointments will be made at the appropriate time.

If a department provides a compensation increase upon promotion, are they expected to provide separate increases for HMS appointments and for MGB appointments?

  • We defer to each department on how compensation is handled. However, we expect that in those departments choosing to recognize promotion with financial compensation, the typical faculty member would receive a compensation increase for a promotion in either, but not both. For example, someone appointed to MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty Physician might receive a compensation increase similar to that for HMS Professor, but then if they are later promoted to HMS Professor, they would not receive an increase, having already received a salary bump.

Are there time-based criterion used in assessing candidate?

  • Candidates may be full-time or part-time, but at least 50% of their total effort should be devoted to clinical care, education, equity, or administrative endeavors.
  • We expect most faculty will become candidates for consideration for MGB Senior Clinical Faculty Physician at least seven years after completing training. They will typically have been in practice for at least 15 years prior to becoming candidates for MGB Distinguished Clinical Faculty Physician. However, all candidates will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.