Understand the Issues That Increase Staff Turnover To Beat It
Is yet another physician assistant moving to another job from your organization?
Staff retention is an increasing problem for healthcare providers in the United States. With mounting demand for healthcare from a growing and aging population, your organization is under enormous pressure because of staff turnover.
To tackle the problem, you must improve your staff retention strategies. The first step in doing this is to identify why your physician assistant wants to leave only a few months after joining. We’ve put together this guide to help you understand the issues that cause healthcare professionals to leave their jobs. As you’ll learn, some reasons are systemic, and some will be specific to your organization.
1. Your Physician Assistant Is Burned Out
Many studies have shown that burnout is one of the major causes for employees in healthcare deciding to quit. There are many underlying reasons for burnout. These reasons include volume of patients, long and unsociable hours, and the paperwork burden.
Poor work/life balance affects a physician assistant’s physical and mental health and harms their ability to work to the best of their ability. Left unchecked, your physician assistant becomes burned out, with no motivation to continue working in your organization, and possibly having fallen out of love with healthcare.
2. Your Physician Assistant Doesn’t Feel Valued
Have you heard the saying that people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses? If your organization’s management culture doesn’t make its people feel valued, you’ll find that motivation falls. Taking action to ensure that your physician assistant feels appreciated from their first day is critical to retaining them in the longer term.
3. The Job Doesn’t Meet the Employee’s Expectations
Another common issue is that what the physician assistant thought the job would be turns out to be different to reality. This is often because of poorly composed job adverts which mislead candidates to expectations of hours, benefits and pay. Additionally, during the interview process, you may give an unintentionally misleading impression of the role and the stress that the physician assistant may experience.
4. Your Physician Assistant Finds the Work Boring
While a task list never seems to get shorter, if the work that your physician assistant does is not challenging enough it can lead to boredom in the role. If your assistant isn’t utilizing their skillsets or doing what they have been trained for, they aren’t going to enjoy their work as they could. The result is demotivation and falling productivity.
5. Your Physician Assistant Fears for Their Health at Work
The role of a physician assistant includes exposure to many risks. The fear of health or safety issues is magnified when accompanied by long hours, physical work, and difficult patients.
6. A Lack of Individualized Development Opportunities
The career ambitions of each physician assistant vary as much as the personalities of the patients they care for. Some want greater responsibility. Others may wish to specialize in their careers. If their ambitions are not satisfied in their current role, they are likely to seek a move to an organization that will.
7. Workplace Conflict
A poor workplace culture or colleagues that revel in conflict can lead to an increase in employee turnover.
8. The Aging Population Strikes You Twice
The aging population is boosting demand for healthcare services, but it is also reducing the supply of labor. Healthcare organizations are squeezed between these two extremes; as employees such as physician assistants retire (and need greater access to healthcare), it is becoming more difficult to replace them.
The Ideal Strategy to Reduce Turnover
The first step in retaining your physician assistants and other employees is to hire the right people. At Loyal Source, we build relationships with medical professionals. We understand them, their personalities and their ambitions. We understand our clients similarly. This intimate knowledge of both candidates and employers enables us to match the right talent to the right position in the right organization. You benefit from employees who are more likely to stay with you for the long haul.
To discover how we can help you beat your staff retention problems, contact Loyal Source today.