Scholarly Productivity and Occupational Stress Among Physician Assistant Educators

PURPOSE: Academic scholarship continues to challenge physician assistant (PA) educators in the United States, who typically enter academia with little experience in research or publication. Consequently, difficulty with navigating the promotion process might be expected to impact both job satisfaction and retention of PA faculty. Providing reasonable benchmarks for scholarship is one focus of this project, along with exploration of relationships among publication success, gender, job stressors, program support, and intent to leave academia. METHODS: Deidentified data from the online 2017 Faculty the median was zero with 50.6% reporting no publications during their career. Almost half (45.5%) of PA faculty were stressed by research or publishing demands; 53.6% were stressed by the promotion process. Physician assistant educators stressed by promotion were more likely to consider leaving their institution or academia as a whole (Fisher's exact, P < .001 for both). CONCLUSION: This study updates publication benchmarks for PA educators. Scholarship levels have dropped since 2010, likely related to the recent influx of junior faculty. Navigating the promotions process is a significant occupational stressor for PA educators and is associated with faculty intent to leave academia.