An academic appointment
Dr Cutbush has been appointed to the academic title of Associate Professor with the University of Queensland.
What an academic title is
Universities confer academic titles on practising clinicians who contribute to teaching and research but who are employed in clinical practice rather than by the university itself. The arrangement is common across medicine, because a medical programme cannot teach students clinical work without clinicians who do that work every day. Titles of this kind are granted at a level that reflects the contribution made, and they are reviewed periodically rather than held permanently, so they depend on that contribution continuing.
In practical terms the title recognises work that is already being done: teaching medical students on placement, supervising registrars and fellows, taking part in examinations, supervising research candidates and publishing the results of that research.
Teaching and research alongside clinical practice
Surgical teaching happens in several settings at once. Students and trainees sit in on consultations, attend operating lists, and are taken through the reasoning behind each decision. Formal lectures and tutorials cover the anatomy of the shoulder and the conditions that affect it. Research supervision is separate again, and involves helping a candidate frame a question that can actually be answered, design a study around it, and write it up for review by other surgeons.
There is a practical reason surgeons take this on beyond the teaching itself. Explaining a technique to someone who has not seen it before, and then defending the reasoning behind it, exposes the assumptions underneath it. Research does the same thing more formally, by asking whether what is believed to work actually does when it is measured. Both tend to change practice over time. Individual results vary.
Related information
- Our post on lecturing medical students at the University of Queensland.
- The research and publications pages describe the work that sits behind the academic appointment.
- The shoulder fellowship page explains the training programme run alongside it.
- The shoulder surgery page covers the clinical work itself.