We’ve reached the new year, which can mean a sense of hope for a fresh start, positive beginnings and a renewed outlook for the year ahead.
It can also mean physician contracts ending, new openings to fill and a need for hard-to-recruit specialties.
Hopefully you were able to enjoy the holidays and unplug, but any open positions prior to well-deserved time off now require candidates to fill them. Some specialties will be harder to recruit than others, which could cause stress if you don’t know which specialties need more attention and aggressive recruitment strategies.
To help you identify the hardest to recruit and most in-demand specialties and build your recruitment strategy to prioritize your search and resources, PracticeLink developed a Physician Recruitment Index.
These indexes include information gathered quarterly by the PracticeLink system based on supply and demand of specialty jobs and specialists. The more jobs per candidate in the system, the more difficult recruiters may find the search for those specialties.
Download the Winter 2022 15 Hardest-to-Recruit Specialties
Download the Winter 2022 15 Most In-Demand Specialties
Finding physicians for these hard-to-recruit and most-in-demand specialties can cause you to feel discouraged if there isn’t a large pool of candidates qualified to fill the openings. Based on the recruitment indexes, you can see the specialties in which you may need to increase your talent pool, so you have nurtured prospects when an opportunity occurs.
It’s also important to know which specialties face the most burnout, especially coming off long holiday shifts. Assessing burnout in your physicians can help you provide balance and keep providers feeling energized and engaged. It can also help you prepare for possible openings in the future.
According to the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report 2020, physician burnout is down to 42% from 46% just five years ago. The specialties included in the PracticeLink Physician Recruitment Index which saw the largest burnout on the Medscape survey are: urology, neurology, endocrinology, family medicine and radiology. Only two specialties with the lowest rates of burnout made the PracticeLink index: psychiatry and otolaryngology.
Competition and demand for specialties can place large amounts of stress on physicians but can also cause tension for you as the one recruiting. Being aware of which specialties demand more time and effort, and knowing which cause the greatest deal of burnout in your hires, will help you focus your recruitment strategy in specific areas and fill hard-to-recruit positions more quickly.
Megan Trippi
