Leadership Development and Its Association With Retention of Surgical Versus Nonsurgical Faculty at a Large Academic...

Leadership development programs are the key for engaging physicians as partners in health-care administration. These programs have become common; however, one potential consequence of leadership training is attrition.

Using a prospectively collected database, Kaplan-Meier curves were used to analyze attrition of physician faculty following an intramural leadership program at an academic health center.

Six cohorts totaling 165 faculty successfully completed our leadership program. Sixty-one faculty (37%) were from surgical departments (Group A) and 104 (63%) from nonsurgical departments (Group B). Thirty-six program graduates (21.8%) departed the institution at a mean follow-up of 68 mo for an annualized attrition rate of 3.6%. Attrition rates for Group B were significantly greater than for Group A (P = 0.05). Most faculty left for career advancement opportunities elsewhere.

Our annualized attrition rate for leadership trained faculty was 3.6%, well below the attrition rate of our academic health center (5.3%) over a similar time period, and the 2018 national physician attrition rate of 7.8%. Strategies to improve retention are discussed.