Research On Role Conflict Of Clinical Teachers In Medical University

The quality of higher medical education is considered to be the main pillar of the high quality medicine graduates and health care services.As an important part of higher medical education system,the quality of clinical teaching directly influence the quality of higher medical education.Faculty is the core and soul of education and clinical teachers as the main implementers are decisive factors of medical education.Advanced education thoughts and ideas and new instruction methods,accompanied by the changes of higher education in China,are gradually applied to medical education.Clinical teachers who only rely on clinical practical experience,have already could not keep the pace of the new generation of medical education.Moreover,the growing tension of physician-patient relationship,a surge of number of medical students and complex clinical teaching environment also challenge clinical teachers.At present,the studies of clinical teachers involving ethics criterion construction,competency characteristics,work pressure,etc give us some enlightenment to understand the clinical teachers group's survival state,but are not enough to go deep into the educational life.As a special community of college teachers,Clinical teacher face a typical role conflict.They need to deal with the role conflict of medical treatment,teaching,research and adapt themselves to the requirements and expectations of medical teachers under the background of the medical education innovation to form the satisfactory teaching behavior.The study focus on clinical teachers' role conflict in work environment in the context of the medical education development.Furthermore,clinical teachers' role conflict overlaps with the clinical teacher development problems under the background of current clinical medical education.Therefore,the study of clinical teachers' role conflict contributes to assist clinical teachers to do role conflict management,promote teacher identity,establish teacher belief,and strengthen endogenous and autonomous impetus for the faculty professional development.Based on the medical education system and social cultural context in China,the clinical teachers' interest demands of role conflict and faculty development,this research employs symbolic interaction theory and role theory,role conflict theory and faculty development theory to explore the structural dimension of the clinical teachers' role conflict in medical universities and examine the current situation and influencing factors of clinical teachers' role conflict.The study aims to explore the critical factors which could relieve the role conflict and promote professional development.Few previous empirical studies have investigated the clinical teachers' role conflict especially in Chinese health care and medical education system.Based on the classical theories and literatures at domestic and abroad,and in combination with the actual situation of clinical teaching and clinical teacher in Chinese medical universities,the study attempts to analyze the structural dimension of clinical teachers'role conflict.Meanwhile,the research explores the possible influencing factors to construct the influencing factors model by using the classical research framework which includes organizational environment,interpersonal interaction,and individual characteristics in the role theory,and proposes the research hypothesis.The independent variables of organization environmental factors are clarification of system,administrative support,evaluation orientation,participation in decision making,training perception,of interpersonal interaction factors are supervisor support,co-worker support,communication,work feedback,and of individual characteristics factors are teacher belief,teaching enthusiasm,workload.The dependent variable are role expectation conflict,role overload conflict and role adaption conflict.The study can be divided into quantitative research and qualitative research to show the external performance and present the internal logic based on the basis of mixed research method.Firstly,in quantitative research,the formal questionnaire is formed through literature review and interview,variable conceptualization and operationalization,and preliminary questionnaire formation,preliminary investigation,reliability analysis,and exploratory factor analysis.After the formal questionnaire survey,473 valid sampling data were collected.The quality of the questionnaire is tested through the data analysis,including the reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.The general situation and group differences of clinical teachers' role conflict have been comprehensively analyzed by descriptive analysis,multiple linear regression analysis,and structural equation model.Based on the dialectical thinking of external and internal cause,the study explores the influence and action mechanism of the organizational environment,the interpersonal interaction and individual characteristics to clinical teachers' role conflict.Secondly,a qualitative research have been implemented by depth interview to ten clinical teachers to present the clinical teachers' educational life story and interpret the quantitative research results,understand internal generating process of clinical teachers' role conflict,and explore the influencing factors only through qualitative research to supplement the quantitative results by coding,classification,establish categories and analysis of the interview data.Conclusions drawn from the above quantitative and qualitative research are as follows:First,the structural dimensions of clinical teachers' role conflict include role expectation conflict,role overload conflict and role adaption conflict.Second,the investigated clinical teachers have three types of role conflict exist in different degrees and at high levels.The role overload conflict is in the highest level,followed by role adaption conflict and role expectation conflict.Third,different groups of clinical teachers' levels of role conflict have difference in the region,the type of hospitals,departments,the type of teachers,gender,age,working years,educational level,the type of professional title,the type of position,teaching workload.Fourth,participation in decision making and workload have positive influence on role expectation conflict while evaluation orientation,supervisor support,co-worker support,teacher belief have negative influence;workload and role overload conflict are positively correlated while teacher belief and role overload conflict are negatively correlated;work feedback and workload have positive influence on role adaption conflict while training perception,co-worker support and teacher belief have negative influence.Fifth,organization environmental factors directly predicts the level of role conflict and indirectly predicts the level of role conflict through teacher belief and workload which have partial intermediary role;Interpersonal interaction factors have direct impact on the level of role conflict and indirect impact on the level of role conflict through teacher belief which has partial intermediary effect.Compared to the existing research findings,the theoretical contributions of this study are as follows:firstly,it extends the object in the field of role conflict research to the clinical teacher which is an important group of higher medical education.Aiming at the structure of role conflict in previous research have different views and the fuzzy role conflict scale structure,the more detailed structural dimensions including role expectation conflict,role overload conflict and role adaption conflict have been investigated and verified by data statistical analysis.At the same time,it concerns the meaning construction process of different kinds of role conflict through clinical teachers' educational life experience.Secondly,it discusses a series of influencing factors and their mechanism on clinical teachers' role conflict,and extends the research field of influencing factors of role conflict from the theoretical perspective of role conflict,organizational behavior,job design,social support,role interaction,teacher belief and identity,considering the reality of Chinese hospital organization and medical education.The study found that the influencing factors of the organizational environment and also explained the reason of weakness influence of organizational environment factors in the background of Chinese medical education and cultural tradition.It revealed the different influence of supervisor support and co-worker support while depicting the clinical teachers' teaching survival in medical universities.At the same time,it identified the intermediary role of clinical teachers' belief and workload between the organizational environment and role conflict,the interpersonal interaction factors and role conflict.It fully discussed the influence mechanism and unveils the black-box in the impacting process.Thirdly,it has a new consideration and comprehension on clinical teacher development from the breakthrough point of role conflict and enriches the college faculty development theories and clinical teacher professional development theories.Practical implications of this study are as follows:first,it provides the policy recommendations to effectively cope with and manage the clinical teachers' role conflict in medical universities,including perfecting the institution system design and instruction promotion on the level of organizational environment,promoting supervisor support and co-worker support on the level of interpersonal interaction,and enhancing clinical teacher's belief and professional development.Second,it develops an new idea to formulate the clinical teachers' development policies and programs for medical educational researchers and managers,including emphasis on cultural development of clinical teacher development and cooperation between universities and hospitals,improving clinical teachers' consciousness and ability of independent development and reflection on teaching practice,and designing the various development strategies and modes in according to the stage of the faculty development,designing the appropriate content and form of faculty development activities to satisfy the clinical teachers' demand of time and space,constructing the clinical teachers' community of scholarship of teaching and promoting the teaching development behavior.This study employs scientific and standardized research methodology to explore the current situation and influencing factors of clinical teachers' role conflict,however,there are some limitations.Subsequent researches may be conducted from the following aspects:first,more influencing factors,especially the personal factors which may play a key role in the clinical teachers' role conflict continue can be explored to enrich the influencing factors model framework.Second,the study results can be further extended by expanding the sampling size and the representation of the sample,hence,more comprehensive picture of clinical teachers' role conflict in medical universities can be outlined.Third,the international comparison study can be carried out to understand the issues of clinical teaching and clinical teacher development in abroad,especially in the medical education advanced countries and regions,and acquire a deeper understanding of the problem reasons and solution strategies in Chinese context.