During March’s AJR Live webinar on the increasing (albeit varying) attrition of our nation’s rad workforce, AJR Section Editor for Policy, Quality, and Practice Management Jonathan L. Mezrich, MD, relayed the following point of order from the audience to presenter Eric W. Christensen, PhD:
“Increased corporatization of academic practices more focused on clinical productivity may also be contributing to academic attrition. The practices are no longer the place some may have signed up for.”
Crowded House: Many rads choose academic paths specifically for the opportunity to teach and conduct research. That’s baked into the gig. And as Dr. Christensen acknowledged, when clinical demands start supplanting such pursuits, the job can become significantly less appealing.
The Distinction: Dr. Christensen drew a clear line between the two distinct types of movement he’s seeing in the specialty:
- Attrition—completely leaving the rad workforce
- Turnover—switching from one practice to another
The Numbers: Additional AJR research from Christensen et al. would indicate that the pain threshold for academic rads might be lower than for those in non-academic practices.
- At lower clinical workload levels, academic rads are more likely to turnover than their non-academic peers.
- Higher work volumes often interfere with the primary reasons they entered academia in the first place: instruction and investigation.
Bottom Line: While the nature of the work is different, academic rads aren’t necessarily doing less work; rather, increasing clinical burdens are undermining their raison d’être and driving practice instability.
Leave a Reply