The nonclinical activities of academic urologists are vital to career development of the individual and specialty-wide impact of the department. Presently, a robust mechanism for tracking and quantifying these contributions is not well established. Although some have recommended use of the academic revenue value unit and other scoring strategies,^1-10 these mechanisms do not adequately capture the diversity of academic urologists’ contributions. This study aims to (1) develop a model that identifies academic activities that impact urological department reputation and have specialty impact, (2) define the relative value of these contributions, and (3) develop a scoring system that outputs an annual clinical scholar index score.

Fifteen broad activity categories were created and then fractioned into subcategories (Table 1). Activity categories were assigned weights 0-1 based on external recognition, work-effort, and expertise required by the activity. These insights were gleaned from the department chair, institute chair, and business intelligence team. A score of 0 was defined as an activity that provided little to no external recognition or was considered an expected activity of an individual at that career level. A weight of 1 was defined as an activity that was essential to the department’s mission, a significant time commitment for the individual, and provided external recognition.¹¹ Faculty were designated as Early (0-7 years), Mid (8-16 years), and Senior (17+ years) career staff based on time in practice. A pathway approach was implemented because certain activities were no longer credited as individuals transitioned between the career milestones (Table 2).

Academic faculty submitted their updated curriculum vitae (CV). Activities were extracted from CVs and assigned to appropriate categories. Credit was not received for presentations that did not produce manuscripts, internal committees, personal hobbies, and contributions that were resourced by extramural funding or salary support. Annual contributions were tallied and normalized. The normalized weighted sum annually was the ASIV (Annual Scholarly Index Value).

Eighteen faculty submitted their CV for review (6 Early, 5 Mid, 7 Senior Career; see parts A-C of Figure). All Early Career faculty contributed peer-reviewed publications. Leadership, clinical trials, and external awards contributed more to the index score than peer-reviewed publications for Early Career faculty with scores that were above the median in their group.

Figure. Early Career (A), Mid-career (B), and Senior Career (C) annual index score values. Reprinted with permission from Orji et al, Urology. 2023;175:29-34.¹¹ ASIV indicates Annual Scholarly Index Value.

As would be expected, the greatest velocity of growth in ASIV occurred during the Mid-career stage. In 2018, there was a noticeable decrease in the nonclinical contributions of Mid-career and Senior Career faculty. This was likely due to a shift in organizational values toward higher clinical output. Senior Career faculty had the most diverse nonclinical contributions.

This scoring system identifies and quantifies the value of nonclinical activities of academic urologists at our institution. It also demonstrates the annual trend of nonclinical contributions of our staff over time. Generalizability of this work is limited by low numbers of those who are underrepresented in medicine. Furthermore, data were collected by way of convenience sample, creating sampling bias. Future works should aim to simplify the model and assess how crediting activities differentially throughout the career milestones may promote preferential participation in some activities and disengagement in others.