Faculty and finances of United States anesthesiology training programs: 2002-2003

Between February, 2000 and August, 2002 three surveys have been submitted to the program directors of the anesthesiology training programs in the United States (U.S.) to assess the departments' needs for faculty and financial support from their institutions. In this article we present the results of a fourth follow-up survey. This survey also asked questions regarding the need for additional support to meet the new 80-h workweek resident requirement and asked the average academic time offered to faculty. The average department has 40 faculty members with 3.7 open faculty positions in the 78% of departments with open positions. Only 25% of the departments planned to add personnel to comply with the 80-h resident workweek. Fifty-one percent of the departments had a positive financial margin of $15,908/full-time equivalent (FIE) faculty anesthesiologist (faculty FTE), whereas 34% had a negative margin of $42,603/faculty FTE. The overall institutional support was $85,607/faculty FTE, which is a 43% increase over the previous year. The average academic time provided to faculty was 13.8%, a decline from 20% in 2000. Twenty-five percent of departments have closed an anesthetizing location as a result of a lack of faculty in 2003. Open faculty positions in U.S. training programs have remained fairly constant at 8% to 10% from 2000 to 2003. Institutional support for training departments has more than doubled since 2000, reaching approximately $85,000/faculty in 2003.