Rob Chang writes…

It’s the end of the year and evaluation time has come around again.

It’s a laborious process.  Self-assessments, peer assessments, nursing assessments, patient assessments, director assessments….  Thick stapled sheets of papers coated with numbers and ratings lay stacked and scattered across the lined dark carpet and desk in my office, each pile somehow representing the culmination of a year’s worth of effort.  The sheer amount of paperwork could likely reconstitute a small forest. (more…)

Rusty Holman writes…

You’re in the middle of conducting an annual performance review. You’re trying to evangelize the next great quality improvement initiative. You walk into the doctor’s lounge and overhear 2 of your physicians talking. You’re running your morning sign-in meeting. Or maybe you’re doing an exit interview. Whatever the situation, you can’t help but cringe – that dreaded, visceral, involuntary recoil – when you hear the words spoken:

“This isn’t what I signed up for.” (more…)

Rusty Holman writes…

My blogging colleagues have made several recent comments that triggered a train of thought about the nature of people in organizations. Comments like “topics that affect the majority of us in our daily practice,” “sustainable and attractive careers for ourselves” and “what’s going on with hospitalist turnover” began to weave together the topics of hiring physicians, retaining them, and the inevitability of some departures. (more…)

Rob Bessler writes…

The New Year is upon us. Hospital medicine’s busiest time of year. There is no better time than now to do some needed housekeeping for your practice site. It is our belief at Sound that there is nothing more important that the quality of the team that we develop and support.  The team and all the clichés that go with that power are real. No individual is as strong in isolation as when powered by the collective support of the team.  These teams can then become the lifeblood of the hospital and the community they serve. Where strong teams exist, turn over is extraordinarily low and when it does occur the team keeps ugrading the talent. This cycle feeds on itself. (more…)

Leslie Flores writes…

When you ask hospitalist physician leaders or practice administrators about their most pressing challenges and concerns, physician recruitment and retention are always high on the list.  You have a heck of a time finding a hospitalist to join your practice, and the minute you do one of your existing hospitalists decides to leave – so you are always playing catch-up.  In fact the Phoenix Group, a think tank comprised of representatives from many of the nation’s largest private hospital medicine groups, recently identified the hospitalist workforce shortage as the single most urgent issue demanding the specialty’s attention (see the Phoenix Group’s white paper “Confronting the Hospitalist Workforce Shortage”). (more…)