Positive features and stressors of the role of program director
| Role characteristic | Representative comment |
|---|---|
| Positive feature | |
| Resident relationships, support and success* | Working with residents. They are generally engaged, enthusiastic and open to challenge. Watching them gain skills and transition into capable surgeons is immensely rewarding/gratifying. (P37) I love teaching, program development, making a difference, and changing their culture — ensuring that residents get proper training and are not taken advantage of. (P78) |
| Educational influence | {I enjoy} the ability to shape the education of the next generation of specialists. (P42) {The ability to} share ideas, projects and problems with the other directors, and to actively participate in setting national goals and standards for the specialty. (P69) |
| Personal fulfillment | I love working with the fellows. They have great ideas and have so much energy and I feel like I am doing something positive to keep {our specialty} as a profession going, which means a lot to me. (P43) I take pride in seeing residents finish their program and knowing I have participated in their success. (P50) |
| Overall satisfaction | The residents — everything about it. The guidance, mentoring, teaching, watching them grow. Extremely rewarding and satisfying. (P65) {I enjoy the} ability to improve our profession by improving resident education, and to improve our residents’ lives, well-being and future. (P52) |
| Stressor | |
| Resident support and remediation | Dealing with residents in difficulty makes it next to impossible to devote time to program improvement and enhancing the skill development of the majority. (P19) |
| Administrative demands | Without administrative support all the mails and communications are my responsibility. (P48) Accreditation documentation {leads to} time commitment and extra work that needs to be done after regular work hours, on evenings, weekends and sometimes when on vacation. (P5) |
| Educational programming | {I am} dealing with the constant pressure to add content for residents … while balancing service and education expectations. (P63) |
| Faculty engagement | At [the] faculty level, being a “change leader” and getting colleagues to put the work into changing their teaching style, filling in CBD evaluations, etc. {is challenging}. (P52) {It can be challenging to} motivate faculty to get involved in the program over and above providing clinical teaching during direct patient care. (P33) |
| Compensation | In our system, with no true university promotion system or support, apart from the innate, visceral benefit one receives from being a part of exceptional, young colleagues/residents’ lives, there really isn’t any other significant benefit one receives. I commit between 1 to 1.5 clinical days for the position, and thoroughly enjoy it, but despite the amount I receive in salary support, I end up losing 3× as much income. (P44) This is one of the most difficult jobs in an academic centre and is often very much underappreciated. (P22) |
Note: CBD = competency by design, P = participant.
↵* Mentioned in narrative comments by 60 participants.