Promotion Portfolio Club Essentials with Carla L. Spagnoletti, MD, MS

Carla L. Spagnoletti, MD, MS, has some promotion portfolio gems of wisdom for our listeners in her return to the Faculty Factory Podcast this week.

At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. Spagnoletti serves as Professor of Medicine and holds the George H. Taber Endowed Chair in General Internal Medicine.

In addition, she is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, the Associate Division Chief for Education in GIM, and the Associate Director of the Masters and Certificate Programs in Medical Education within the Institute for Clinical Research Education.

As discussed in this interview, there are many reasons why clinical faculty should seek promotion. However, clinical faculty often climb the ranks more slowly than their research counterparts.

While Dr. Spagnoletti concedes that this is probably due to multiple factors—such as rigorous and competing clinical duties, a lack of understanding of the process, and not always seeing tangible incentives for pursuing promotion—it became clear that something needed to be done.

Therefore, Dr. Spagnoletti set out to help faculty overcome the final hurdle in promotion: building a promotion dossier or portfolio. She helped form a supportive group to assist faculty in submitting and building this portfolio so they can initiate the promotion process.

At her institution, this group is called the Promotion Portfolio Club (PPC). As a true clinician-educator, she designed it as a curriculum based on a few core theories commonly used in medical education.

“One of the participants in a recent club told us, ‘I'm eternally grateful, as I can only imagine this task would have been incredibly daunting had I gone it alone,’ and that really captures the main reason why we started this project,” she said.

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