Eager recruiters want residents to hear them now

AMA asks job placement professionals to stop paging the young physicians at inappropriate times.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. May 21, 2007.

Chief resident Douglas Ché Miller, MD, was in the middle of leading rounds when his cell phone rang.

He stepped out of the room to take the call. The caller identified herself, rattled off a company name and started asking for information.

"The information they [were] asking for is the information you would normally give to home health care," said Dr. Miller, chief resident of the general surgical program at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.

However, it was not a nursing home or a home health care organization confirming patient orders. The caller wanted information for a recruitment database.

Meanwhile, Dr. Miller's group of students and residents waited to finish presenting patients, their task interrupted by a nonurgent phone call.

Recruiters are increasingly contacting residents at work, disrupting residents' patient care and training, according to anecdotal reports. The development prompted the American Medical Association in late March to send a letter to all program directors and the National Physician Recruiters Assn. asking for their help to stop the practice.

"Physician recruiters offer a valuable service to residents, and most residents would welcome recruiter calls, but it needs to be done in the appropriate context," said AMA Board of Trustees member Samantha Cramoy, MD, a first-year pediatric resident at Children's Hospital in Boston.

According to the letter sent by AMA Executive Vice President and CEO Michael D. Maves, MD, MBA, recruiters are calling the institution's main number and asking to have a resident paged. At times, the callers have "alluded [wrongfully] to having an affiliation with the AMA," the letter stated.