How Can Physicians' Job Satisfaction Be Improved?

As seen in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(Section M1, Wednesday, November 28, 2007)

In any marketplace, when demand is high and the supply is low, resources must be conserved and cultivated to ensure their availability to future generations. The practice of medicine is no different. The aging population has a doubling-effect: increasing the demand for medical care while reducing the supply of physicians who are retiring in record numbers.

Keeping physicians productive and satisfied in their medical practices, while attracting young people to the profession, has become a top priority for the healthcare industry.

The American Medical Group Association has extensively studied the interaction between physician satisfaction, recruitment and retention. Compensation issues are assumed to be the primary causes of dissatisfaction, and certainly reimbursement and malpractice insurance costs lead the list of concerns. However, in our joint physician retention survey with AMGA, we found that “poor cultural fit” with the medical group is the primary cause of turnover.

In the same survey, we discovered that medical groups who assign a mentor to newly recruited physicians reported a measurable improvement in retention. Medical groups shared other strategies for improving retention, such as engaging the spouse and significant other in recruitment and orientation, setting clear expectations for compensation and performance, and offering flexible work schedules.

The underlying message is that physicians are people. Their professional satisfaction is dependent on creating relationships and cultivating a work environment that addresses their needs for “fit and family.” In such an environment, the medical staff can work together to achieve important goals such as clinical quality, patient satisfaction, professional development, fair compensation and recruitment of new physicians to ensure continued delivery of care to future generations of patients.