When you’re interviewing for your first physician job after residency or fellowship training, it may feel premature to already be asking about retention, but experts say that an organization’s physician turnover rate should always be on your mind when you’re searching for a role.
“When you have less turnover, then you have people who can rely on each other,” said Carey Goryl, CEO of the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR), a professional organization of internal physician and healthcare provider-recruitment professionals. “There's the historical knowledge, which is invaluable in so many organizations, and it’s also all the trust that is built between staff and leaders that really is difficult to quantify.”
Goryl said, therefore, that residents and fellows looking for that all-important first post-training job can leverage data found in a recent report issued by AAPPR in collaboration with healthcare staffing firm CHG Healthcare. Ask questions, dig deeper and determine whether a potential employer will do what it takes not just to get you on board but also to keep you happy and thriving in your professional life.
Turnover an issue for all physicians
Yearly physician turnover was reported in AAPPR’s “2025 Physician and Provider Recruitment Benchmarking Report: Search Dynamics and Trends” at an overall median rate of 7.3%. Turnover rates for physicians have remained at roughly that level since 2020, according to the report, though there was a small spike in the wake of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Those in their first physician jobs after training are even more likely to leave, though. A report from Jackson Physician Search and the Medical Group Management Association shows that nearly 60% of physicians will leave their first post-training jobs within three years. More than 25% said they considered leaving within just one year.
Given that context, retention should be on every physician’s mind—especially if they are in their early career.
“Culture and burnout and the importance of leadership within an organization—Those things really matter,” Goryl said.
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How common are retention strategies?
In AAPPR’s “2026 Physician and Advanced Practice Provider Retention Strategy Report” (registration required), 158 recruiters of physicians and other healthcare professionals were surveyed. Almost all were part of in-house recruitment teams, and more than half were in multi-hospital systems.
Of those surveyed, 39% reported having a formal retention strategy, and the same share said that they have informal retention-related activities but no formal structure. Of the remainder, 16% reported having no retention strategies and 6% said they did not know whether there were retention efforts.
“There's a maturity continuum among healthcare organizations when it comes to retention,” Goryl said. “There are those that have the strategy. There are those that have activities that may or may not be tied to the larger strategy. And then there are those who are like, ‘Yes, we know we need it.’ I would imagine even in those organizations, there's a leader, there's a department that is trying to do something.”
Healthcare organizations that employed more than 1,000 physicians were about 1.7 times more likely to report having a formal retention strategy, according to the survey.
The main barriers to developing formal retention strategies, the report says, were unclear organizational ownership of the issue, lack of executive prioritization or buy-in, competing priorities, recent organizational changes, and limited resources or budget.
The same study was conducted in 2022, and AAPPR wrote in its recent report that there has been increased movement toward formal retention strategies, increased ownership and retention measurement among the organizations surveyed.
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Ask about physician retention in your job interviews
Goryl said that, using the data, physicians can tease out a healthcare organization’s commitment to retention during a job interview. Some of the questions to ask could include:
- Do you have a formal retention strategy?
- Do C-suite leaders make physician retention a priority?
- Do you track physician turnover, days to fill and other retention-related data?
- What retention-related activities or programs do you offer?
- How often are those activities or programs accessed by physicians?
- Is there ownership of retention activities by one or more employees?
Of all the factors, though, Goryl said one is more likely to lead to an organization having a formal strategy related to physician retention:
“Sponsorship and C-suite engagement really seemed to be the key differentiator in whether organizations had a strategy in place,” she said.
Learn more on evaluating practice environments to match your priorities with the AMA STEPS Forward® toolkit, “What to Look for in Your First or Next Practice.” It is enduring material and designated by the AMA for a maximum of 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Read up on AMA accreditation.
