Unlocking Faculty Potential: A Quasi-Experimental Study of Coaching and Academic Performance in Health Care Settings
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: As faculty in academic medicine face mounting demands to excel in clinical care, research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities, interventions that support professional sustainability are increasingly critical. Coaching has emerged as a promising developmental strategy within health care leadership, yet its impact on research and clinical outcomes in academic medical centers remains underexplored. This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effectiveness of a coaching program using intentional change theory (ICT) as a conceptual framework. ICT emphasizes sustainable personal transformation through alignment between the ideal self and professional goals. We examined a sample of 189 coached clinical faculty and 200 matched peers who had not yet received coaching at a large academic health center over a 4-year span between 2018 and 2022. Findings revealed that coached faculty demonstrated significantly greater research productivity—evidenced by increased new publications, citations, and h-index gains—than their non-coached counterparts. However, no significant differences were observed in clinical productivity (work relative value units), patient experience scores, or clinical trial activations. These results suggest that coaching is particularly effective in enhancing behaviors such as research output, which rely on individual motivation and self-regulation—key mechanisms supported by ICT. Conversely, initial evidence suggests outcomes more tightly governed by institutional systems may be less responsive to coaching. This study offers implications by highlighting coaching’s potential to improve research performance through self-directed growth. Future research should investigate mediating psychological mechanisms, examine conditions under which coaching could be effective in impacting a wider array of outcomes, and adopt longitudinal designs to examine coaching’s long-term impact on faculty performance, engagement, and retention in academic medicine.
Institution: The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Language: English
Topic: Coaching Methods and Impact
Subfield: Applied Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7223400296