Faculty Perceptions of Communication at an Academic Medical Center: A Faculty Forward Qualitative Analysis

BackgroundThe University of Mississippi Medical Center facilitated the administration of the Faculty Forward Engagement Survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges to faculty in the schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, and health related professions. Our goals for this voluntary survey were to evaluate faculty culture, policies related to faculty, and faculty engagement and satisfaction, which was also the intent of the survey (Brubaker et al., 2013). The survey tool included questions with narrative responses and for this qualitative study, we analyzed the responses to, "How could communication with faculty be improved?"We were unable to locate any publication of a qualitative analysis of the Faculty Forward survey narrative data to date, nor any research based upon data from a Faculty Forward survey administration to multiple schools at an academic medical center. Therefore, we feel this work contributed uniquely to the knowledge base about improving communication with and among faculty across multiple schools at an academic medical center, and provided this contribution from a richness of data in the narrative feedback from faculty, not just from the quantitative results of the survey.Review of the LiteratureThough some suggest that a full, traditional literature review prior to data analysis in qualitative research does not make sense, it is still important to draw on others' relevant work in order to present justification for any research (Becker & Richards, 2007). A "when-and-asneeded" literature review is better suited to directly support the most important themes that emerge from qualitative data analysis, and that is the method that we employed here (Wolcott, 2009).The thorough and current review of the literature based on the themes that emerged from this qualitative analysis showed that communication with and among faculty is a significant determinant of faculty satisfaction. On the Faculty Forward Engagement Survey itself, faculty at multiple institutions previously expressed dissatisfaction with communication (Wai, Dandar, Radosevich, Brubaker, & Kuo, 2014). A culture of open communication, including opportunities for faculty input, contributes to faculty satisfaction (Bunton et al., 2012), and communication directly contributes to workplace desirability (Wai et al., 2014). Faculty dissatisfaction with communication is a major predictor of faculty leaving academic careers (Bucklin, Valley, Welch, Tran, & Lowenstein, 2014; Demmy, Kivlahan, Stone, Teague, & Sapienza, 2002; Lowenstein, Fernandez, & Crane, 2007). In one study, dissatisfaction with communication was found to be the best predictor of faculty leaving an institution (Demmy et al., 2002).As important as and directly tied to faculty satisfaction is faculty retention. Recent reports of faculty attrition rates (Pollart et al., 2015) have been alarming, with 50% leaving their institution and 80% of those leaving an academic career altogether over a 10-year period (Alexander & Lang, 2008; Corrice, Fox, & Bunton, 2011). Communication is pivotal to faculty satisfaction with their workplace and their intentions to stay in the institution.Our literature review also suggested some ways to improve communication with and among faculty (e.g., town halls, small group meetings with leadership). Communication via town halls and structured conversations promotes a sense of openness and shared governance that promotes recruitment, retention, and transparency (Bunton et al., 2012), and good communication supports the transparency that is so necessary for faculty satisfaction (Cohn, Bethancourt, & Simington, 2009).PurposeThe purpose of this study was to determine faculty perceptions of how we could improve communication at one academic medical center with six schools on its campus.ContextWe as researchers and authors primarily share a commitment to interprofessional collaboration and a mutual interest in qualitative research. …