What Do Doctors Want? (Abeyna Bubbers Jones, Medic Footprints)
WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 18 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. The needs for doctors are increasing, but many clinicians are leaving the profession because they are burned out and are looking for other career opportunities. What do doctors want and what kind of careers can they have?
Medic Footprints is a UK based organisation connecting doctors to alternative careers. The organization is 8 years old and has 16.000 doctors on its newsletter subscription list. The mission of the organisation, as explained by its founder Abeyna Bubbers Jones, Occupational Health Physician by background, is to offer doctors fulfilling career opportunities. “It's quite difficult to quantify this, but the vast majority I'd say at least 50% of doctors are looking for other opportunities because they are burned out. They are stressed because of their work or the way they've been asked to work, they lack autonomy in their jobs and they're just looking for a way out of a place that they just don't really like to be in,” she says.
Bubbers Jones went through her own difficult time of finding meaning in the medical professionals after her studies, when, as a junior doctor, she was faced with a lot of bureaucracy and little practical experience. Her doubts about medicine as the right career choice for her evaporated after she started working as a doctor in South Africa, where the healthcare system requires doctors to get more hands-on experience earlier in their career.
Upon returning to the UK, she started Medic Footprints, while still working as a doctor. However, she soon felt she wanted to explore other opportunities and found purpose in sharing that with other colleagues. “Doctors are smart and talented people and there are plenty of opportunities for doctors to expand their portfolio of skills beyond clinical medicine. They can do that in health tech, consultancy, pharma management, set up their own business. Doctors are great entrepreneurs. And so there are lots of doctors just looking for support in exploring that.”
One of the doctors that found support in Medic Footprints is Selina Chew - a Malaysian doctor, that later started Medic Footprints Malaysia. The franchise has the same mission of supporting doctors in their careers, with the focus on Malaysia and impacting the healthcare there.
“Two things are especially problematic in healthcare. One is the bullying and the second is the rigid hierarchy. You have a houseman that's the medical officer, then the registrar, the specialist, the consultant. There is too many levels and there's always this wall you have to climb over to talk to people, to your superiors. So one of the things I envision for healthcare here in Malaysia is that we break this down. I'll just give you an example: in public health care, we have multiple rounds a day. So first, the houseman comes very early to do a round. Then the medical officer comes and that's the same round again. And then later the specialist will come and do the same rounds. They ask the same questions or maybe additional questions. And then on the fourth round, the consultant will come in and do their rounds with all of this the houseman and specialists as well. I see this as very redundant. Why can't we go as a team and see patients? I am hoping that we can change this. It's going to be a very tall mountain to climb, but that is something I envisioned for our health care here,” says Selina Chew. The second message she hopes to send across to doctors is to change the mindset that they need to do everything by themselves. “We've been trained to think this way in medical school. Even in the hospital training, you are told that you have to do everything, that you can only rely on yourself. But that's not true in the real world. You want to get something done? You definitely need people around. You need a good team. You need a community. So I guess I just want to let doctors know that it's okay, that you don't know everything. You can always ask for help.”
How To Find The Right Doctor?
Medic Footprints builds relationships with potential employers and doctors looking for career changes.The organisation can act as a valuable recruiting partner. “Doctors are highly talented people and they're expensive as well. So you really want to hire the best and specifically the right doctors for your company. We help companies define well what kind of doctors they want. So for example, a telehealth company needs GPs. Saying you want a GP, it's just not enough. You want a GP who is going to help grow your brand, refer more really great GPs, and provide a certain level of service, maybe even leadership in some ways. I think that the mistake that a lot of clients make is that they hire generalist recruiters ... Recruiters are great in many ways, they fill in the gap in many ways, but they're not specialists in the area. They will just find any doctor and doctors are quite discerning. So it can take time to actually onboard them and get them to say yes,” says Abeyna Bubbers Jones.
Doctors Are Not on Linkedin
Companies need to have a robust acquisition and retention strategy when recruiting doctors because hiring and onboarding a doctor that’s not a good fit, will result in lost energy and high cost.
As Abeyna Bubbers Jones also warns, most doctors are not active on LinkedIn, which has become a popular professional network for recruiters to find talent. “If you're looking at social media, I think the vast majority of doctors are on Facebook or Twitter. Let's ignore Twitter, because that's a bit of a different platform where it's more about outgoing rants about life and work. On Facebook, there are a lot of private groups for doctors with 30,000 to 40,000 doctors in those groups. That's one of the resources that we use to promote any opportunities that come up. We advise a lot of doctors to go on LinkedIn, if they want to be found to get a job. But not all doctors necessarily know what they want.”
If you want good talent, you need to inspire them
A recent study of 20,000 doctors from 124 institutions in the U S. showed that one in five doctors plan to exit healthcare in the next five years.
The pandemic hasn't only brought different strains to healthcare workers. It has also shown that parts of work can be done remotely which radically redefined ways in which we wish to and are prepared to work. Generations today have different expectations of their working conditions and career development. This makes it that much more important for companies to be able to have a clear positioning so the right people can join the right cause.
“Most companies, these days are mission and values-driven, and that is what's going to keep the best talent in your company. Employees’ values need to be aligned with the company values so they can help grow their business. If you communicate clearly what drives you, and what are your business goals, and articulate that to doctors, they will come to you before you've even asked. It is really about the messaging and really establishing a culture that will nurture your staff as well as your doctors because that investment will go far,” advises Abeyna Bubbers Jones.
This is just an excerpt.
Listen to the full discussion with Abeyna Bubbers Jones on iTunes or Spotify.