Physician experience in 2024: Trends, challenges, and opportunities

Coauthored by Milissa Eagle, MA, Director of Workforce Analytics. 

Physicians are a cornerstone of the healthcare industry. But, like other healthcare professionals, the physician’s role has become much more challenging over time. Limited resources, short staffing, increasing demands, evolving expectations, extra administrative work, and other daily frictions prevent physicians from operating at the top of their license. As a result, the risk of burnout rises, their experience deteriorates, and optimal patient outcomes can suffer.

We need to understand physicians’ experiences not only to improve their job satisfaction and retention, but because their experience is central to the patient experience too. The link between the two has never been clearer: Patients report better experiences when their providers are more engaged.* In fact, patients who see engaged providers rate their provider (medical practice “Rate Provider 0–10”), on average, 11 percentile ranks higher than those whose providers are disengaged. A similar pattern is seen in other areas of the patient experience, like feeling respected and likelihood of recommending.

We analyzed new data from 2.2M U.S.-based healthcare workers, including 83,000+ physicians in more than 40 specialties, to understand the state of the healthcare workforce experience today. Despite ongoing challenges, we see many positive developments as we dig into physician-specific data. Physician alignment and engagement are up year over year—finally some welcome news, as employee and physician engagement has been on the decline since 2021. These positive trends mark a potential turning point—and a glimmer of hope—after pandemic-related turbulence ricocheted through the healthcare industry. Through focusing on physician engagement and alignment, organizations can improve both physician retention and patient experience. 

Physician engagement and alignment are trending in the right direction

Alignment is a critical component of engaging physicians. Press Ganey data reveals that 80% of organizations with low physician alignment also have low physician engagement.

Physician engagement and alignment reached an all-time high during COVID’s peak. As the pandemic washed over the country, physicians rose to the challenge, meeting the virus head-on. United toward a common purpose, they also felt more aligned with leadership than ever before.

That surge didn’t last, and engagement and alignment plummeted in 2022. But now there’s positive news: Both are back on the upswing. Physician engagement has improved from 3.98 to 4.00 (on a 5-point scale) year over year, while alignment is following suit, jumping from 3.71 to 3.75, and even surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

80% of organizations with low physician alignment also have low physician engagement.

Closing the gap on experience: Segmenting physician populations to understand variations

While overall physician engagement and alignment scores are trending up, segmenting the data by different populations exposes key variations.

As we look across the 15 largest board-certified specialties in our database, pathology, radiology, and neurology perform relatively higher on engagement and alignment. By comparison, anesthesiology, critical care medicine, gastroenterology, and family medicine struggle with engagement the most, while physician alignment is lowest in general surgery, cardiovascular medicine, anesthesiology, critical care medicine, and emergency medicine.

Gender disparities also persist in physician experience and engagement. Women consistently score at least -0.10 points (on a 5-point scale) lower across all engagement, alignment, and decompression. For activation, only a -0.02 gap separates the two groups. The greatest contrasts relate to decompression: While both groups struggle to disconnect at the end of the day, female physicians score -0.19 lower than their male colleagues on this measure.

A path forward: Focusing on key drivers of physician experience

We often say healthcare is a calling. Despite the long hours and high pressure, physicians remain deeply connected to their patients, and they feel like their work makes a difference. This year, we also saw improvements in staffing, with scores rising +0.14 points, and work-life balance (up +0.15). 

But there’s always more to the story. Despite significant gains, staffing and work-life balance still lag far behind other key physician experience factors. These two areas, along with scheduling, availability of beds, and coordination with other departments, introduce frictions that contribute to physician burnout—a constant challenge in healthcare. And when burnout impacts physicians, it impacts their patients, and the patient experience, too.

Organizations need to understand the key drivers of physician engagement and alignment to build upon positive momentum or intervene instantly where improvements are needed.

The data reveals three clear themes: 

1. Senior leadership actions: Physicians want to see senior leadership making the effort to listen—and act. They expect these actions to reflect the mission and values of the organization.
2. Involvement in decision-making: Physicians want to be part of the solutions that help the organization succeed. They want to feel their voice is heard and their feedback leads to actual change.
3. Quality improvement: Physicians prioritize the delivery of high-quality care, and they want to ensure their organization does the same through their investments and actions.

In short, when leadership gives physicians a platform to voice and implement their ideas, alignment and engagement improve.

3 steps for improving the physician experience

1. Create opportunities for continuous and meaningful listening. This includes senior leadership “walking the talk” (rounding and meeting with physicians) and addressing concerns. Using new listening approaches like crowdsourcing and digital focus groups, more physicians can be brought into the conversation to share ideas.
2. Identify frictions in physicians’ everyday work. Listen to physicians to understand where frictions are most prevalent or distracting, and crowdsource solutions to overcome these barriers.
3. Segment physician data to identify experience gaps. Understanding variations within your own organization helps you tailor your approach to physician experience improvement.

For a deeper dive into our most recent EX data, download the report: “Employee experience in healthcare 2024.” Or reach out to one of our workforce experience experts, and we’ll discuss your unique challenges 1:1.