Past President's Message
December 2011 Newsletter Article
The APA Board recently held a strategic planning meeting to plan for the next 5 years. It was an exciting time and Benard Dreyer will be providing more information on the strategic plan. However, on behalf of the Board I wanted to share with you a brief overview of the results from the Value of APA Survey since your responses helped us with the strategic planning of our organization. Thanks to all of you who participated both in offering input into the survey and also completing the survey.
The survey objectives were to:
- Determine the demographics of our APA members
- Identify functions that our members value to help guide future decision making
- Identify membership needs for additional innovative activities
The survey was disseminated by email with a web link through the APA list serve. Eight reminders were sent out and the completion rate was 626/1901= 33%. While lower than we had hoped, this response rate was higher than past rates of 17-31%.
Here is a summary of the results:
Demographics of respondents 626/1901
|
64.6% 4.9% 85.9% 4.2% 8.4% 1.7% |
Age (years)
|
13.4% 30.0% 27.0% 22.8% 6.9% |
Respondent Degree
|
94.1% 28.8% 6.8% 0.3% 1.5% 8.6% |
Respondent Rank
|
5.5% 35.5% 25.0% 26.0% 1.5% 6.5% |
Professional Activities - Average amount of time spent in each area
|
32.1% 28.2% 29.0% 25.0% 8.9% |
The survey asked about the value of different APA activities. Six hundred twenty six members responded and the results presented include the percentage who ranked that activity as very high value (% very high) in addition to the rating average from a Likert scale of 1-5 with 5 representing the very highest value.
| Activity Membership Networking at PAS PAS research presentation PAS workshop Academic Pediatrics Journal APA list serve APA website APA newsletter |
% "very high" 32% 44% 35% 33% 37% 26% 21% 19% |
Rating Average 3.95 4.39 4.25 4.22 3.87 3.49 3.27 3.13 |
Members were asked to note their Involvement in APA Activities. Here are the results:
Educational Scholars Program
- Scholar 9.2%
- Faculty 10.8%
New Century Scholar
|
1.4% 7.0% |
Young Investigator Awards (YIA)
|
25.3% 12.9% 17.9% |
Research Network Participants
|
18.5% 9.3% |
BORN network was just developed at time of survey
Other Activities
|
28.3% 7.8% 8.5% 46.0% 33.7% 43.2% 23.3% 18.2% 9.9% |
Participant in PAS Activities
PAS workshop
|
51.5% 32.0% |
Research Abstracts
|
75.4% 54.2% |
Presented Invited Science 12.7%
The next set of responses addressed membership needs and suggestions for innovative activities
Which should APA implement regarding communication strategies?
|
44.6% 41.7% 36.0% 34.4% 32.7% 29.7% 18.4% |
Financial Strategies to Enhance Membership
- Cost share dues with other organizations
- Offer life- long APA dues
- Reduced meeting registration for members
- Opt out not to receive journal
- Scholarships for travel to PAS
General Ways to Enhance Membership
- Reach out to departmental chairs and division chiefs- APA membership should be automatic
- Dues renewal letter that can be put in promotion packet
- Reconnect with community providers
- More mentoring programs
- More relevance to senior faculty
- Conference calls with specific themes- as APPD did
- Certificate for framing of membership- ribbons recognizing duration of membership
Strategies for Membership Specific to Medical Students and Residents
- Provide free membership
- Create a Medical Student SIG
- Enhance Resident SIG
Regional Issues: 26% of respondents stated they had attended a regional meeting in the past 3 years. Of those who had attended a regional meeting, 30% stated they received moderate, 12% high and 8% very high value from involvement in their region.
Suggestions to Enhance Regions
- Define purpose of regions
- Link PAS research submissions to regions
- Activities year round
- Share strategies for success
- Send letters to local institutions re regional meetings
- Put regions on PAS badges to enhance visibility
- Initiate regional professional activities
*Regional visiting professors
*Extension of fellowship curriculum to regions
*Expand mentorship to regions
*Train the trainer leadership conferences
Suggestions to Enhance SIGs
- SIG webinars
- "Robust" SIG support
- Have workshops be developed by SIGs
- Present research abstracts at SIGs
- Targeted learning by SIGs
- SIGs to have online material
- Support for SIG list-serves
The survey asked members about mentoring activities within the APA and areas in which to strengthen mentoring. Here is a summary of the responses and the order in which they were listed. Keep in mind that this rating doesn't reflect the number of members who responded to each activity.
Mentoring Opportunities within APA
- SIG involvement
- Educational Scholars Program
- Leadership meeting
- Young Investigator Awards
- Research Networks
- PAS workshops
- New Century Scholars
- Committee work
- Region Involvement
Comments on ways to enhance mentorship
- Need for more formal structure for mentorship/ distance mentorship
- Mentor match program
-Consider tracks for junior, mid-career, later career
-Outreach to junior faculty, fellows/ residents
-Tracks by education, research, advocacy/public health
-Need for ongoing, longitudinal relationship
-Mentorship outside own institution
-National mentorship bank
- Assist new APA members to identify mentors
- Mentorship workshops
- Help junior members understand role as a mentee
- Innovative venues: world café, speed mentoring, etc
- Include non-physician members
- Personal outreach to members, some don't know how to get involved
- Consider mentorship that doesn't require attendance at PAS
- Advertise mentorship opportunities
- Social gatherings for mentorship- coffee, dinners
Survey Limitations
- Response rate of 33% so results may not be generalizable to all membership
- Respondents more likely to be active in our organization
- Challenge of interpretation of value versus number who answered question
Conclusions
- Overall endorsement by our members who responded that they value the APA
- Members suggested additional innovative ideas to:
- *Increase membership/prestige of our organization
- *Communication strategies
- *Enhance Regions
- *Enhance SIGs
- *Increase Mentorship
The APA Board and other members will be working on the strategic planning which will address and incorporate many of the ideas raised in the survey. So stay tuned and please keep your ideas coming!
I would also like to acknowledge the core survey development team which included Benard Dreyer, Judy Shaw, Chris Stille and Jennifer Padilla.
In response to the results from the survey, we are offering an exciting opportunity for mentoring at the 2012 PAS meeting. Our inaugural activity will include an APA sponsored dyadic speed mentoring session followed by a small group discussion between the mentors and mentees. The event will take place on Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 12:00- 2:00pm and 60 mentees and 60 mentors will be included.
APA members who are within their first 10 years of an academic faculty position will be invited to participate as mentees. The mentee will be asked to rank choices 1-3 from a list of mentorship tracks (see below). Then each mentee will be matched to a track and have the opportunity to meet for 10 minutes each in a dyadic discussion with 6 different faculty members. After the speed mentoring activity, the entire small group (the 6 mentors and 6 mentees) will meet for 30 minutes. The purpose of this discussion will be to debrief on the experience and share more ideas about future mentoring opportunities.
The mentorship tracks will include the following:
- Advocacy
- Balancing research and clinical duties
- Basic science research
- Career development
- Clinical Research
- Community based research
- Curriculum vitae review
- Educational scholarship
- Health Services Research
- Leadership skills
- Public Health
- Qualitative Research
- Quality Improvement scholarship
- Scholarship from Everyday Work
- Teaching Skills development
- Work-Life Balance
So stay tuned. An email through the APA list -serve will be going out in December to invite mentees to participate and to recruit mentors for this activity.
As always, I welcome your comments or suggestions.
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!
Janet Serwint
Immediate Past President
Academic Pediatric Association
jserwint@jhmi.edu
