The Physician Onboarding Experience— Gateway to Your New Job
Starting a new job can be exciting, challenging, and nerve-wracking all at the same time—and even more so if it’s your first job out of training. Luckily, there’s a process called “onboarding” to help you through the transition into the new position. Not so luckily, not every employer has organized a good plan for that process. But that’s changing, with more employers understanding the link between a good start and a happy employee. Doctors responding to AAN Neurology Career Center questions about being onboarded report a variety of experiences, ranging from not feeling very supported as a new physician to being helpfully guided through a week or more of structured activities by on-staff onboarding specialists. While most experiences were positive, it’s clear that physicians who know what to expect or which questions to ask will have an advantage.
Third Time is the Charm Amtul Farheen, MD, FAAN, gained her knowledge about onboarding the hard way, through personal
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experience. In her first two positions, Farheen says, the process was not well-designed. Unfortunately, she wasn’t aware of what should be happening, and ended up struggling to adjust in her new roles. She attributes some of that struggle to being fresh out of training. “In fellowship, you are being babied and looked over,” she says, “but once you step into the real world, it’s like coming out of the eggshell. You’re leaving that protected zone and you have to find your own way.” When she joined the Veterans Administration a year ago, Farheen says she had a good onboarding experience, with a week devoted to an orientation that included everything from the electronic health system to the buildings she would work in. And even so, she could have benefited from more. Farheen explains ruefully how she needed instruction from a resident to find shortcuts to the kitchen and to learn which keys would open which doors. “Now I can laugh at those things but at the time it was hard. I’m glad I could ask my juniors instead of bothering my supervisor with those little details.”
