Physician Staffing Blog

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Survey: New Physicians Are Swamped With Job Choices

May 14, 2019

2019 Survey of Final-Year Medical Residents Image

By Phillip Miller

Finding a job is not the challenge for newly trained physicians, a new survey suggests. Choosing from among dozens or even more than 100 job options is.

Merritt Hawkins’ newly released 2019 Survey of Final-Year Medical Residents examines the career choices, plans, and expectations of physicians in their final year of residency training. The survey indicated that the majority of these individuals received information regarding job opportunities from multiple recruiting firms. There are a number of benefits for final-year residents who work with recruiters, and the right balance of communication helps to make the process continue more effectively.

Both physicians who are completing training in primary care and those in specialty areas are on the receiving end of recruitment offers, according to the survey. Sixty-nine percent of primary care final-year medical residents said they received 51 or more recruiting offers during their training, as did 69 percent of internal medicine subspecialists and 64 percent of surgical specialists. This belies the common perception that physician shortages are confined to primary care.

The survey also conveys some unfortunate news for rural communities, which traditionally have had a difficult time attracting physicians. Only 1 percent of medical residents prefer to practice in communities of 10,000 people or fewer, and only 2 percent prefer to practice in communities of 25,000 people or fewer.

Despite a favorable job market, there are still new doctors who are unhappy about their choice of a profession, the survey indicates. Almost one in five (19 percent) said they would not choose medicine as a career if they could go back in time and select the professions they pursued. This is not necessarily surprising—many physicians, even some of those in training, are experiencing professional burnout.

The survey includes a range of additional data that may be useful to those recruiting physicians who are completing their training. Download your copy here.

Phillip Miller is Vice President of Communications for Merritt Hawkins and Staff Care, companies of AMN Healthcare.