Academic promotions in the discipline of family medicine and oral exams for associate professorship

Abstract

Legislation of family medicine specialization took place in 1983 in Turkey and the first vocational training program started in 1985 in training and research hospitals. Establishment of family medicine departments at universities in 1993, according to the regulatory decision of the Board of Higher Education was an important milestone in the development of family medicine as an academic dicipline. This development had been followed by residency training and appointment of academic positions in universities. The first successful results were taken in 1996 regarding promotion of associate professorship positions. Discipline was strengthened by developing academic staff each year. During the process of the development of academic staff, the formation of juries for evaluating applications of associate professorship was one of the major problems because of the lack of standardization. Over the years, increasing numbers of academic staff and the development of the discipline played a huge role in solving this problem. As of 01.06.2013, the number of associate professors reached to 92 and 20 of the associate professors among them appointed to professor degree. The majority of the associate professors are from universities (79.4%), and the second group are from training and research hospitals (13.0%), and 7.6% of them are from primary care. 43 of 92 (46.7%) associate professors were female in the discipline.