Some estimates indicate there are upward of 15,000 hospitalists practicing hospital medicine. And it seems that at any one time 8,000 of them are looking for their first or next job. Most hospital medicine groups are starting up or growing. And with the mobility of our specialty, retention has become as important as recruitment.
SHM has a number of initiatives that can help hospitalists and hospitalist employers sort all this out.
If you are looking for a new opportunity in hospital medicine, your first stop has probably been the extensive recruitment ad pages (“SHM Career Center”) in The Hospitalist. And now SHM has created a unique online “SHM Career Center” that we will match up against CareerBuilder.com or Monster.com for functionality and ease of use. We hope to grow this to be the most extensive collection of hospitalist opportunities anywhere.
Any visitor to the SHM Web site (www.hospitalmedicine.org/careercenter) can view all of the career opportunities and sort through them by setting (academic or community hospital), employer type (hospital or hospitalist group or multispecialty group), and geographic location. You can also look for pediatric or adult-patient hospitalist positions or for full-time or part-time jobs—or even nocturnists.
What’s more, SHM members really can customize their job search at the online “SHM Career Center.” If you belong to SHM you can have jobs e-mailed right to your inbox. You can set your own search parameters, such as “Show me all the jobs where the employer is a hospitalist-only group in Maryland and Pennsylvania.” You can also post a blind resume for potential employers to review and contact you confidentially. Every day just turn on your computer, fire up your e-mail, and there will be jobs waiting for you to investigate.
SHM will also have tips on how to write a resume, how to interview, what you should look for in work hours and compensation, and just about everything you need to find your first job or your next job.
For those hospital medicine groups looking for their next hospitalist, the online “SHM Career Center” will most likely give you the most selected group of hospitalists looking for your job ad. SHM has tried to be the best source to meet the hospitalists’ needs and this is just the next idea we came up with.
Come and give the online “SHM Career Center” a look-see and let us know what you think. Better yet: Become an SHM member and have the jobs come to you.
Career Satisfaction
Once you get that right job, SHM wants to help you make a career in hospital medicine. Every new specialty runs the risk of creating exceptional demands in their early years until everyone figures out just the right formula. Right now SHM has convened a Career Satisfaction Task Force that is conducting research, hosting focus groups, and developing guidelines and parameters to help hospitalists understand what elements lead to the best chance of a satisfying career.
Emergency department physicians went through this in the early days when they went from working 24 shifts a month to 14 to 16 shifts. Pilots developed mandatory work hour restriction to avoid sleepy or stressful situations. We know it feels uncomfortable sometimes to be the pioneer element while things are still in flux. But help is on the way.