Finding their voices: how a group of academic family physicians became writers.

Academic family physicians often struggle trying to write for publication. While there are many prolific writers in family medicine, others find writing to be a challenging task. This not only affects their applications for promotion and tenure, but has much broader implications for the discipline of family medicine. Family physicians at our institution, Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John’s, are not only dedicated to their practices and to teaching, but are also an energized and creative group who have introduced innovative educational initiatives both within the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University and within the discipline of family medicine more broadly.1 Locally developed initiatives have become integral to the teaching programs at our university and in clinical practice, but have not yet been shared with others through scholarly dissemination, including publication. Perhaps like King George VI, whose ascension to the throne was marred by his severe speech impediment, academic family physicians stutter in their writing and hence have no “voice.” Lack of confidence, skill, and time, as well as fear of their work being rejected, are the primary sources for this hesitation. Whatever the cause, this limitation is a severe impediment to personal career advancement and to the growth of academic family medicine as a whole. Historically, family physicians have been appointed to university faculty positions because of their skills as clinical educators and not as researchers or writers. This varies among universities and has changed in more recent years, as the academic qualifications required for a full-time faculty position are now more rigorous. In spite of this there are still many academic family physicians who do not have strong writing skills. Attempts to deconstruct perceptions of scholarship, particularly scholarly writing, often result in faculty openly expressing their vulnerability in this area. They reveal that lack of skill, fear, and inability to find time in a busy clinical and teaching environment are their greatest limitations. While we have some understanding of why many academic family physicians are not engaged in writing, best practices and strategies to address this reticence have not been fully explored. There have been several Canadian writing initiatives including peer-support writing groups,2 research skills programs with community family doctors,3 and educational support groups.4 Scholarship programs have been developed for medical faculty and there is strong support for the attainment of master’s degrees while working or while on sabbatical. All of these initiatives have shown some positive effects; however, there is little published literature about how to support faculty members in their efforts to write for publication. Our question was, “How can we effectively meet the educational needs of busy academic family physicians in writing for publication?”