Salaries, recruitment, and retention for CRNA faculty--Part 1.

The nature of differences in salaries between academic faculty and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) working in clinical positions using recently collected data are explored. The differences in median salaries among program directors, assistant program directors, academic faculty, and clinical faculty are large. Furthermore, survey results imply that the most important barrier to recruiting teaching faculty is salary differentials. Part 1 of this 2-part column discusses salaries, recruitment, and retention of CRNA faculty; Part 2, to be published in the June 2008 issue, will focus on clinical faculty contributions to the education of CRNAs. Nurse Anesthesia programs compete with clinical sites to employ Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) faculty. This competition will become more critical as CRNA teaching programs expand to meet the need for more CRNAs and as present CRNA faculty retire. Interviews with program directors reveal a common belief that one challenge to recruitment and retention is the salary differential between academic faculty and CRNAs working in clinical positions, some of whom also serve as clinical faculty. In this column, the nature of these differences is explored. A comparison of clinical and academic salaries, which is based on 2 surveys that contrast salaries of clinical faculty with those holding academic faculty positions, is presented. Throughout this column, " academic faculty " is defined as CRNAs whose main job description involves teaching nurse anesthesia students in an academic environment , while clinical faculty is defined as CRNAs who supervise nurse anesthesia students in clinical settings and who may or may not be employees of colleges or universities. The first survey, the 2006 Survey of Program Directors and Faculty, was completed by program directors in the fall of 2006 with a response rate of 75% (77/102). Program directors also were asked to invite faculty associated with their program to complete the survey. The responses provided self-report salary data that included clinical faculty regardless of whether they were compensated for faculty responsibilities. In the second survey, the 2007 Survey of Program Directors, completed in early 2007 with a response rate of 75% (79/105), program directors answered questions about the salaries of faculty employed by their program. This survey provided salary data both collected through self-report and provided by program directors. CRNAs with no connection to a teaching program were not included in either survey. Table 1 shows descriptive statistics from the first survey. Salaries are contrasted among different types of positions …