Successful recruitment and retention of academic physicians: hiring for longevity, productivity, and leadership in hospital medicine.

BACKGROUND

Considerable resources are expended by hospitals to recruit and retain physicians that will be successful. Healthcare managers lack data to guide these decisions. In that vacuum, suppositions regarding what attributes contribute to physician success predominate.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the relationship between candidate factors known at the time of hiring and subsequent longevity and success of physicians in an academic division of hospital internal medicine.

RESEARCH DESIGN

A retrospective review of all physicians hired in an academic hospital internal medicine division. Measures of longevity, research productivity, academic promotion and division leadership roles were compared to personal and professional characteristics at the time of hiring. Success was quantified in those four domains and associations explored for between success and hiring factors.

RESULTS

Female physicians had greater longevity at the institution. Physicians from the hospital region were no more likely to stay long-term as compared to those from other regions. United States medical graduates were more likely to attain leadership positions than international graduates. There was an inverse relationship between research productivity and administrative leadership.

CONCLUSIONS

Factors commonly sought by academic healthcare institutions were not associated with long term success in academic hospital medicine. Less research productivity was associated with greater divisional leadership involvement, suggesting that scholarship and administrative leadership may represent separate tracks for physicians at academic institutions.