Introduction: Academic Nephrology 2008

It is a truism that academic medicine has changed markedly over the last two decades. Academic institutions and their hospitals have become similar to large corporations operating increasingly on business principles. These changes and new accountabilities demanded by institutions of faculty, particularly clinicians, have created some new challenges and tensions for the academically inclined nephrologist. Clearly the decline in the physician-scientist over the past two decades is well chronicled. This change is worrisome because truly astounding advances in biomedical research have made the physician-scientist even …