The College of Medical and Public Health is asking the university for an exemption in all departments of clinical fields to allow more practicing clinicians to teach and practice at OSU hospitals.

Dr. Andrew Thomas, an associate dean for the COMPH and a member of junior faculty in internal medicine, said the clinical fields include family medicine, internal medicine and surgery.

In other words, the COMPH wants the trustees to take off the university-wide caps from the non-tenured faculty, Thomas said.

Non-tenured faculty are mostly physicians who teach the majority of third and fourth-year medical students, but primarily work for patient care at the university hospital. They are known as the clinical track — they teach and practice in clinical areas and departments.

The caps, however, would still remain on the tenure tracks, where the professors concentrate on the areas of basic study and research. Tenured faculty, which make up 40 percent of the faculty, teach most of the first and second-year students. But according to the COMPH, they often are hired in excess to either make up for the lack of clinical physicians or justify the hiring of more, since there is a set ratio.

Thomas said post-medical students and residents would also benefit from a greater number of available doctors, both in the classroom and in the hospital. The COMPH pointed out in its proposal that faculty-student ratio is now a major factor in the U.S. News and World Report medical school rankings.

Although COMPH is ranked among the top 50 medical schools, OSU’s student-faculty ratio is the lowest of the 50, Thomas said. Lifting non-tenured faculty caps could improve OSU rankings, he said.

Dr. Caroline Whitacre, associate vice president for health research and professor and chair in the departments of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics, had an active role in the discussion and formation of the proposal. She agrees OSU’s rankings could be improved by the elimination of the caps.

“Absolutely, it will affect the rankings,” she said. “It will increase our faculty-student ratio, which is one of the criteria in those rankings.”

Whitacre also said pressures are increasing for the limited number of teaching physicians who need to generate income by seeing patients.

“Teaching students almost becomes a luxury,” she said. “The clinicians have to see a certain number of patients, so time is becoming more and more precious. By lifting the cap, more (teaching physicians) faculty can be hired so students will have the best education possible.”

Todd Armen, president of Inter Professional Council for professional students and a fourth-year medical student, said everyone could benefit from the hiring of more doctors.

“It will improve the health care for the OSU community by allowing patients — including OSU faculty, staff and students — access to a greater number of physicians,” he said.

The problem is there are caps on hiring non-tenured faculty who are not primarily involved in research applied university-wide, Thomas said. The COMPH, following university standards, limits hiring physicians as teachers who are not contracted for research.

University Senate, which has discussed COMPH’s proposal since the fall, approved the lifting of the caps on Jan. 16. The cap cannot be done away with for good, however, until the Board of Trustees decides on it at its next meeting Feb. 7.

During the University Senate discussion meeting, some concerns were raised.

“We understood their concerns of what this may do to tenure,” Thomas said, referring to the university’s feared domino effect on other schools wishing to reduce tenure tracks, which will affect the overall quality of the research.

“If it’s the medical school today, then it’ll be the law school tomorrow, and the business school next year,” Thomas said. “But I don’t think it’ll be that way.”

Professors are also worried about the number of available tenured positions if the medical school decides to hire more individuals without tenure. There are also concerns about university national rankings, because the number of researching faculty contributes to the overall quality of a university.