Roughly 5% of orthopedic surgeons leave their first practice within 2 years
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Key takeaways:
- Among the 3,784 surgeons surveyed, 5.7% left their first practice within 2 years.
- Surgeons on a nontraditional application timeline were more likely to leave their first practice.
According to published results, 5.7% of orthopedic surgeons leave their first practice for another position within 2 years.
“The claim that ‘50% of orthopedic surgeons leave their first job within 2 years’ did not originate from evidence,” Jonathan D. McKeeman, MD, MBA, and colleagues wrote in a recently published study.
McKeeman, a resident in the department of orthopedic surgery at St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania, and colleagues performed a retrospective analysis of data collected from 3,784 orthopedic surgeons prior to their American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS) Part II examination from 2007 to 2009 and from 2017 to 2019. They also analyzed whether surgeons followed a traditional or nontraditional application timeline.
“Traditional candidates either did not complete a fellowship and sat for part II of the examination within 2 years after graduating from a residency program or completed one fellowship and sat for part II of the examination within 3 years after graduating from a residency program,” McKeeman and colleagues wrote.
Overall, 228 surgeons (6%) changed their practice location before the ABOS Part II examination and 215 candidates (5.7%) left their first practice within 2 years.
McKeeman and colleagues found surgeons took the ABOS Part II examination at a mean of 2.1 years after reporting their first practice location. They found 76% of surgeons took the ABOS Part II examination within a traditional timeframe. Surgeons on a nontraditional timeline left their first practice at a higher rate (20.5% vs. 1.3%), changed practices more often (1.5 moves vs. 1.2 moves) and moved farther (500.1 miles vs. 304.4 miles) compared with surgeons on a traditional timeline.
“This information can help graduating orthopedic surgeons (and their families), practice managers and leaders within our field establish short-term expectations, as well as encourage those interested in early career turnover rates among orthopedic surgeons, to reference objective data,” McKeeman and colleagues concluded.
Perspective
Back to TopThe report by Jonathan D. McKeeman, MD, MBA, and colleagues on the rate at which orthopedic surgeons change jobs within their first 2 years of practice was interesting but unsurprising. My experience having trained more than 100 spine fellows is consistent with their observation that surgeons changing jobs in the 1- to 2-year timeframe is relatively uncommon. As the authors note, this is driven at least to some degree by the structure of board certification itself, which makes changing jobs before the process is complete relatively disadvantageous. I agree that analysis of surgeons changing jobs in the 2- to 5-year timeframe might be more reflective of whether orthopedic graduates are selecting jobs effectively.
Looking at this topic from the 20,000-feet view, the assumption that our major decisions are well informed may be less accurate than we might hope. Looking back at my decisions on college or medical school or orthopedics or my job, I may have had a directional view of where I was going but I certainly could not anticipate how those experiences would play out. In this report, the authors note that surveys (notoriously inaccurate) suggest that location and/or financial decisions are important factors when orthopedic surgeons choose to accept or leave a job. That may be true but, in my experience, group dynamics seem to be an important driver. Practices where the surgeons like each other and everyone enjoys coming to work tend to be stable.
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