Abstract for: Exploring the challenges experienced by academic medicine using archetypes

Despite its critical role in advancing medical knowledge and training future clinicians, modern academic medicine is facing many challenges including funding instability, workforce shortages, evolving operational and pedagogical demands and ongoing tensions between clinical service and other academic responsibilities. This paper explores how system archetypes can be used to explore deeper these challenges and identify leverage points that can bring meaningful reforms and sustainable change. Academic medicine is a complex adaptive system. Using eight archetypes, the paper explores the effects of university funding, competing demands, bureaucracy, staff workload and burnout on faculty attrition, quality of clinical education, job satisfaction and university culture. By applying the archetype lens to academic medicine, this paper aims to move beyond short-term reactive solutions to embrace strategic policies that enhance institutional resilience, faculty and student well-being and the effectiveness of both care delivery and medical training.