In Response to “Promotion Preparation Tips for Academic Family Medicine Educators”

Dr Keating and colleagues’ recent article ¹ providing tips to support family medicine educators' promotion preparation is an important read for academic physicians. We agree that “promotion has historically valued the scholarship of discovery over the scholarship of teaching.” However, the tips provided reinforce a system that has historically undervalued the role of clinician-educators. The promotion and tenure process is antiquated in many university settings, and current criteria for promotion are inadequate to meet the needs of learners and communities we care for, particularly in promotion of health equity, justice, and antiracist medical education and clinical care. With new, proposed requirements for family medicine residency training from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education coming, now is the time to identify appropriate metrics for promotion that value organizational missions, education, and care of communities. ² Instead of putting weight on publication numbers, these metrics should mirror the duties of family medicine residency faculty, with heightened value afforded to innovations in community care delivery and education of the next generation of physicians that focus on what society needs from family physicians of the future. ³ Family medicine departments can and should lead this change within their institutions in response to the needs of society, in similar fashion to our creation as a specialty half a century ago.