Twelve tips for early career medical educators

The first 10 years of career development pose unique challenges for MD- and PhD-trained faculty members working in medical education. These may include publishing peer-reviewed articles, winning grant funding, teaching, maintaining a clinical practice, and supporting professional communities both within and external to their institution. As the inaugural and current leaders of the ECME group in Canada, we have actively sought to better understand the challenges ECME faculty members face. We developed this understanding by surveying and tracking the qualitative reports of our ECME members, reviewing the (limited) literature available on ECME faculty members' experiences, and learning from our own experiences as ECME faculty and the advice shared by our own mentors. In this paper, we consolidate this knowledge into 12 tips for ECME faculty members. We suggest these tips will benefit both MD- and PhD-trained ECME faculty members as they strive for professional success.