The Allied Health care profession has a challenge!! How do we keep clinicians in clinical practice.
https://australian.physio/sites/default/files/advocacy/APA_2023_Workforce_Census_Report_FA_May24.pdfsurvey data
I delivered a presentation at the Business day at the APA conference in Adelaide @APASC25 and talked about the challenge. I presented a discussion about career development particularly about taking on equity options and the inherent risks and benefits. I was speaking to business owners and many questions came from the owners about how to start the process and afterwards from some younger clinicians who wanted to understand how to approach their principals to discuss their options.
I am particularly interested in the cohort of those clinicians who are between 3 and 8 years from graduation.
Why this cohort?
In years one to three I have maintaining in my writing https://www.michaelkenihan.com.au/book that the focus should be on achieving a degree of clinical excellence which means high level of ability to treat most conditions/injuries. Hence years one to three can be well catered for in this phase and should keep clinicians engaged.
It is during the next five years from 3 to 8 that I believe we are not addressing the matters that will see clinicians be fulfilled while they contemplate what is next for them. In these years they should be achieving some commercial success by building a solid following of patients on their day to day list and hence some better degree of income. In this phase if we can also promote the career journey then perhaps that will start to ensure that they see what the future can hold in their chosen profession! The acquisition of business skills will also assist the career journey.
So… how do we address the challenge.
I advocate that we need to develop clear career pathways for our graduates, train them well on the job not just clinically but also in the operation of the business they are working in. This may entail some attendance at short business courses and to encourage some reading about business an understanding how the financial aspects of the business work as a minimum developing and understanding of the financial triple bottom line statements namely:
Profit and loss
Cash flow
Balance sheets
Work on supporting them to be outward looking and start to teach them about the business operations and what opportunities may await them.
There are many ways we can address disaffection and some of those will be:
- earning better incomes,
- understanding the opportunities that a health care profession offer and
- seeing better training in business
- start developing younger clinicians to be in a position to take up and equity opportunity
I have been developing a paper on the preparation of clinicians to take up equity options and recently a colleague of mine @craigallingham advised that “equity is an anchor for successful businesses”. I think the profession need to perhaps include some training aspects about the business of the profession into undergraduate courses or consider a mandatory process of teaching for those who venture immediately into private practice upon graduation…. Most likely on of the reasons I wrote my book!
I will be continuing my quest to understand better why people leave the professions and look at ways we can assist clinicians to see a long and rewarding career ahead of them
