PRACTICE MANAGEMENT


How to Recruit a General Surgeon

We welcome strategies that you and your colleagues or hospital recruiters used in successfully recruiting a General Surgeon for your staff/practice. What worked and what didn't for your search? We hope to collect feedback from your - our members on an ongoing basis. In the meantime, please find a strategy that worked for one of our own board members...

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Strategies and Personal Experiences in Recruiting a General Surgeon...

Trial Locums for New Recruits: A New Way to Hire a General Surgeon - Dr. Ravinder Singh, North Bay, ON

In an environment of abundantly trained General Surgeons, the challenge I and my service faced was who to choose to fill a spot at our hospital as a General Surgeon.

Traditionally, hospitals have hired those they know or have trained, but how could a hospital hire based on traditional practices when there was limited exposure to general surgery residents and little local interest due to the fact we were in Northern Ontario?

Combining intelligence with the physician recruiter at the hospital, a process was developed to hire for a general surgery spot at our hospital in 2013. Due to the lack of residents rotating through our hospital, we required applicants to do a locum at our hospital for a minimum period of time (1 week). The locum included doing on call work, and if a long term locum, elective time was given. As the Head of Service, I offered my elective time for 3 months for candidates to utilize. I felt all aspects of practice should be assessed and not just on call services.

For the position offered, there were several applicants similar to what had been seen provincially for job postings. In order to be eligible for a locum, the candidate’s curriculum vitae was reviewed, along with references. Candidates had to have (or be in process of having) Royal College certification and have a valid license from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (or be in the application process).

The locum was a tool to assess the candidate’s knowledge, skill and professionalism. As the Head of General Surgery, I preformed surgical assist call to fulfill a supportive and assessment role. This was combined with feedback from colleagues from different services (e.g. anesthesia, emergency medicine, etc.) and allied healthcare workers (e.g. nurses, clerks, OT/PT) using formal feedback tools (Review, Recognition and Development form, and 360 review).

Candidates were then offered a formal interview after reviewing their locum experience. The interview was a chance to assess the candidate’s ability to deal with certain scenarios (e.g. dealing with conflict, thoughts about quality and quality initiatives, etc.). Most candidates had the academic ability and training based on their CV, but this way of interviewing was a tool to assess the candidate’s experience and ways of responding to scenarios encountered in the workplace.

After interviewing of candidates as the Head of Service, I touched based again with the references of each candidate. A package was then compiled for each candidate including the CV, references, feedback forms, and interview results. These packages were given to each of my General Surgery colleagues. After a time period to review, all General Surgeons met along with the physician recruiter and a non-General Surgeon (in this case an anesthetist) to rank the candidates. The reason for the non-General Surgeon to be present was to ensure there was no bias in the decision that was being made by the service of General Surgery. The position was then offered based on ranking.

What did we learn from this experience? The most important aspect was actually having candidates as locums. This provided a realistic assessment of candidates and actually helped keep things objective instead of choosing based on subjective opinions. In fact, this process changed our outlook in picking a candidate several times until we all met as a service and discussed the candidates. The style of interviewing assessed the candidate’s abilities to fulfill CanMeds roles like Leader, Scholar, Professional, Collaborator, etc.

The success of this process was in the candidate we chose. Furthermore, other services and departments have adopted this process and have had continued success. - Dr. Ravinder Singh, OAGS Board Member-at-Large, is on staff at North Bay Regional Health Centre as Chief of Surgery and Head of Service for General Surgery. He is also NOSM Site Director for the General Surgery Residency Program.

- Dr. Ravinder Singh, OAGS Board Member-at-Large, is on staff at North Bay Regional Health Centre as Chief of Surgery and Head of Service for General Surgery. He is also NOSM Site Director for the General Surgery Residency Program.

(Originally published in The Cutting Edge Newsletter, Issue #38, 2015.)

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