In addition to employing instructors, researchers and other traditional faculty members, the Brown Medical School also collaborates with 1,251 area health professionals and physicians.
Known as clinical faculty members, these individuals are physicians and medical researchers who devote a minimum of 100 hours per year to educating Brown medical students, residents and fellows. Almost all clinical faculty members contribute their time and expertise free of charge, according to Med School officials.
The clinical faculty consists of community physicians who are self-employed or work for practices, people directly employed by hospitals and people who work for foundations through grants, said Associate Dean of Medicine Philip Gruppuso.
The current system for clinical faculty - and the reliance on voluntary teaching - emerged because the University does not own a hospital, Gruppuso said.
Clinical faculty include "clinician educators" and "voluntary clinical faculty." The 129 clinician educators are physicians or health scientists who must teach for at least 200 hours per year, according to the Med School's Web site. The other 1,122 clinical faculty members work 100 hours per year as voluntary clinical faculty, said Jane Eisen, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior.
James Burrill, clinical associate professor of community health, estimates that 50 to 60 percent of all physicians at the Med School's seven teaching partner hospitals work as clinical faculty.
Only 21 to 22 clinical faculty members receive compensation from the University for working as course leaders, and the stipends do not earn them a profit, Gruppuso said.
"I don't really think there is anybody who is making extra money because they're teaching," he added.
The rest of the clinical faculty members are not compensated for their work at the Med School. "It's just sort of an intellectual and humanistic and philosophical status," Burrill said.
Despite these intangible benefits, the lack of financial compensation makes it difficult to maintain a high number of clinical faculty, said Associate Dean of Medicine Arthur Frazzano.
Clinical faculty are involved in an exhaustive array of health topics. "If you look at the clinical faculty who are affiliated with Brown, they represent every segment of the medical community in Rhode Island - all aspects of primary care and virtually all areas of specialty medicine," Gruppuso said.
There are 14 clinical departments centered in seven affiliated hospitals, according to Medical Faculty Affairs Officer Jean Pertain.
Gruppuso said students interact with clinical faculty in academic courses - especially BI 360: "Doctoring I" and BI 362: "Doctoring II," which are taken in the first two years of medical school, and core and elective clerkships taken later on.
However, "most of (the clinical faculty) are involved in the teaching of residents," Frazzano said.
Some clinical faculty members teach courses at the Med School, while others serve as guest lecturers. Many physicians have students shadow them as they go about their day, and some even have students interact with patients and take medical histories.
Several members of the clinical faculty give students advice on other aspects of doctoring, including physical diagnosis or breaking bad news to families.
Getting involved
Past and current clinical faculty members interviewed by The Herald mentioned a variety of reasons for committing time to the Med School.
"The clinical faculty is extraordinarily diverse, and it is in no sense monolithic. It runs the gamut from anything you could imagine in terms of involvement or lack of involvement with students, so to get a capsule sense of what's the typical clinical faculty person is just impossible," said Edward Feller, co-director of the Community Health Clerkship.
Many clinical faculty members said they got involved because doctors and hospitals view teaching as mutually beneficial. Doctors who are "being exposed to medical students and being up-to-date with the literature provide better care for (patients)," Feller said.
Other clinical faculty members said they teach to fulfill a personal or professional obligation. "We got taught and we want to pay it back a little bit," said Michael Fine, clinical assistant professor of family medicine.
Certain clinical faculty said they enjoy working in the presence of medical students. "(Students) change the level of energy in the room," said John Lafleur, clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine. "There's something invigorating about having younger people who are at the beginning of their careers."
James Greer, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior who has students conduct psychiatric interviews, said the students he's worked with were especially adept at analyzing patients.
"I've found that the students provide a real and very beneficial service to the patients that they interview," he said. "They are not just taking. They are, in their interviews, often coming up with information that is very useful for the patients."
Some clinical faculty said having the title and association with the University also helped influence their decision to teach. A position on the Brown faculty is an impressive credential at national and international conferences, said Donald Murphy, clinical assistant professor of community health.
