It’s residency Rank Order List season, and I thought I’d share a paper published in AJR from 2016 titled, “Radiology Resident’ Satisfaction With Their Training and Education in the United States: Effect of Program Directors, Teaching Faculty, and Other Factors on Program Success.”
It was a small study where the authors surveyed 217 radiology residents.
Of that group, 168/216 (77.8%) of residents were satisfied overall with their residency programs.
You’re always going to have some sour grapes, and it’s not possible from the data to figure out how much of that fraction might be related to noncontrollable factors like the city, the stresses of dealing with student loans, or other factors. But as the authors noted, that’s a big difference from the golden era:
This is lower than reported in similar previous national surveys conducted by the American College of Radiology, which reported a 97.8% level of job satisfaction of radiology trainees in 2003, and 97.6% level of job satisfaction in 1995.
Like with internet comments and product reviews, convenience surveys always lean toward the dissatisfied. But the data are still interesting because they can highlight the causes for dissatisfaction, even if they play an outsize role compared to the general community.
The three sub-categories with the greatest correlation with overall satisfaction were satisfaction with the program director and administrative office, daily workstation experience, and faculty.
So basically everything.
But of the three, the program director and administration were by far the most dominant. I suspect it’s more of a break not make scenario:
The factor with the greatest correlation to satisfaction with the program director and administrative office is how approachable and responsive the administration is to resident concerns.
A good program director may help make a program, but a bad one can definitely tank one.
A good PD is both a boss and an advocate. While not all trainee complaints are necessarily fixable (or even reasonable), accountability, transparency, and attentiveness aren’t something to take for granted in program leadership. Culture colors everything.
It might be impossible to change the culture of the hospital. It might be impossible to reduce RVU pressures on faculty or improve mediocre teachers. So the survey is actually good news because the program leadership is far more mutable.
There was one throwaway statistic they reference from a 2003 study that ties into the daily workstation experience/faculty components:
A survey with 132 junior radiologists revealed that 68% of the responders left academia after an average of 3.28 years because of low pay and lack of academic time.
That was almost 20 years ago, and the RVU pressure and lack of academic time have gotten worse since then. I wonder what that number is now.
My group is extremely stable, but I’ve seen a ton of turnover amounts young attendings in both academia and private practice. I don’t think enough practices of any variety are willing to allow for a Goldilocks approach between productivity and revenue.