Regarding academic medicine as a faculty staff member and attending, I can give you my daughter's experiences at HMS. She is ABC. While in residency HMS picks highly selected residents for future faculty staff. It is a two years Harvard-MIT program to train future clinical and lab investigators. It is a paid program with additional salary during residency and a Master of Medical Science degree is granted at the end. For my daughter, after her fellowship she became HMS faculty staff as lecturer first, attending, assistant professor and so on.
Here is my understanding of how much time a "medical school faculty doctor" sees patients. It depends on how much funding/programs one has on clinical research. HMS encourages their faculty doctors to do more research. As for my daughter she spends 50/50 percent of her time on both sides. Attending is mandatory for core faculty doctors, about 4-6 weeks a year. There are non-faculty doctors working in medical school hospitals. But I assume if you are doing private practices, you and your medical group can decide whatever schedule that works best for you. BTW, I am a retired software engineer.
Attending should be referred to as doctors who supervise/teach residents, interns and medical students in teaching hospitals as medical school faculty staff. Not all practice doctors are attending doctors, more like practicing doctors.
