Laurie's new book is out! Job Hunting for Physicians is the perfect guide for residents and fellows embarking on their all-important first-job search. It's available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and by request at your local bookstore in both print and ebook. Laurie's also looking for a few residents and fellows to review the book. You'll be provided with a free ebook to do so. Reach out to her via our contact page for more information.
Whether you’re hiring a physician or a non-physician provider, odds are you’ll spend a great deal of time (and probably money, too) attracting the right clinician candidate to you practice. If that new hire ultimately doesn’t work out, you practice will face the costs of going back to square one—as well as lost revenue while that job remains unfilled. Effective on-boarding can help ensure your new hire knows what is expected and become productive more quickly. Yet despite the high stakes involved, getting new hires off to a good start often gets much less attention than recruiting does. Protect that big recruitment investment by getting your new clinicians off to a strong start. Here are some quick tips for how to do it. Be realistic about ramp-up time. It’s natural to be excited about the productivity a new clinician can bring to your organization. It will take a while, though, for your new hire to ramp up to their full capacity. Plan more accurately for the ramp-up by considering the individual’s training and their prior experiences. A nurse practitioner or physician assistant may need a lot of training and oversight for many months, especially if they’ve just graduated or are coming from a different specialty. (Remember that less-experienced clinicians will likely be counting on your training—and not providing it could severely affect their morale.) Even experienced physicians will need time to get acclimated to your systems, protocols, and workflows. And if expect a newly hired physician to attract new patients of their own, keep in mind that creating a reputation and building a network also take time. Be clear from the start about expectations. When employed clinicians fall behind on unspoken expectations, resentments may fester—and relationships can fray if both sides come to feel deceived. Before you even recoup your investment in recruiting, your new hire could end up leaving your practice. Unfortunately, it’s a sad pattern we’ve seen too often in our consulting work. The first step to avoid such costly misunderstandings is to be as clear as possible about what you expect. Invest time to document a full
