A medical college joins teaching with a working hospital, so its teachers are also clinicians. Their time is split between classrooms, wards and theatres, and the records that describe them have to hold up for both roles.
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Share your requirementsA medical college has departments for anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, and clinical departments such as medicine, surgery and paediatrics that work through an attached teaching hospital. Faculty move from professor to associate and assistant professor, with senior residents and tutors below them. A clinical teacher may lecture in the morning, run an outpatient clinic, assist in theatre and guide postgraduates in the afternoon. Hours are long, and it is hard to separate teaching time from service time on paper. The wider education hub covers what institutions share, and this page deals with people and workflow only.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
The same doctor is expected in the lecture hall and on the ward round, and the timetable and the roster rarely agree.
Without a rule, no one can say how much of a clinician's week is teaching, and complaints follow about overwork.
They arrive for a fixed term, learn the department and leave, so continuity rests on a few permanent teachers.
Specialists have private practice options, and a post may remain empty through the whole academic year.
Appointment terms are held by the college, the hospital and the department in different forms.
Faculty of basic science departments see fewer visible rewards than clinicians, and move to other colleges.
Eligibility documents sit in personal files, and teachers learn their position late.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; Employee Administration; Career and Succession Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for education, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a medical colleges business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A written weekly pattern for each cadre showing teaching, clinic, theatre and duty hours.
What this coversHideA written weekly pattern for each cadre showing teaching, clinic, theatre and duty hours. See role design.
One page for each role with duties, reporting line and what is expected of the person each week.
What this coversHideOne page for each role with duties, reporting line and what is expected of the person each week.
A first-week guide for senior residents and tutors on department routines, teaching tasks and who to ask.
What this coversHideA first-week guide for senior residents and tutors on department routines, teaching tasks and who to ask.
One file per teacher with appointment, subjects, experience and promotion papers, owned by one person.
What this coversHideOne file per teacher with appointment, subjects, experience and promotion papers, owned by one person. The HR documentation process describes the set-up.
Name who could lead if a head left, and give them a small teaching or administrative responsibility to prepare.
What this coversHideName who could lead if a head left, and give them a small teaching or administrative responsibility to prepare. See succession planning.
Include them in appraisal, training and department events so their work is as visible as that of the clinical side.
What this coversHideInclude them in appraisal, training and department events so their work is as visible as that of the clinical side.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Clear duties for faculty, residents and tutors across teaching and service.
One faculty record that holds appointments, experience and promotion papers.
A timetable and duty roster that agree with each other.
Named successors for department heads and a plan to prepare them.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in education, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Faculty, administrative and support staff leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it within the academic calendar.
7 min readRead article
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Draw a weekly pattern for each cadre with teaching, clinic, theatre and duty hours, and agree it with the heads of department. Review it each term and adjust where the pattern no longer matches reality.
It tells a person who will be in the department for a short time what teaching and service tasks are theirs, who supervises them and what is expected by month. It shortens the settling-in period.
Many specialists have attractive options outside teaching. Offer clear hours, protected time for academic work and a visible path to the next cadre, and begin looking well ahead of the vacancy.
Give them a visible place in appraisal and training, involve them in curriculum decisions and recognise their teaching in public. Dissatisfaction often comes from feeling like a side department.
Keep the appointment terms, hours, subjects and renewal dates for each in one file. A monthly list of those ending soon stops lapses that cause trouble later.
We would first set a clinician's weekly schedule beside the lecture timetable, count short-term resident changes and open a sample of contract faculty files. A role description set and a single faculty record are common first jobs, agreed in writing before we start.
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