Generating Trainee Interest in Medical Specialties

The Challenge

Medical students and residents spend considerable time and resources exploring sub-specialty training and career opportunities. The rising costs of undergraduate and medical education make specialty-specific compensation a major consideration for trainees when they think about pursuing a sub-specialty. Specialty societies have an opportunity to engage and inform students and residents, giving them access to their specialty-specific compensation and productivity information, and providing knowledge critical to meaningful career planning.

The Strategy

Society leadership is exploring how to engage medical students and residents with the intent of increasing interest in their specialty. They realize that specialty-specific compensation is of increased importance to potential applicants due to the debt burdening students and residents. Society leadership thinks about how they can make this important data and information available to trainees who may be considering their specialty. Such an offering would provide a valuable service to that group and might entice some to join the society as new dues-paying members. They wonder how to gather the data and how to make it available to trainees.

The Selection

A member of society leadership was speaking to a colleague from another specialty society and learned they had recently joined Phairify’s Partner Program. As part of the program, the society and Phairify developed a web-based, specialty-specific, physician value study that collected and reported up-to-date physician compensation and productivity data. She learned that joining the Phairify Partner Program was free (as was study implementation), and that all society members received immediate access to the data as a no-cost member benefit. She convinced her specialty society to partner with Phairify and they completed a physician value study. Upon conclusion of the study, the society was able to mine Phairify’s specialty-specific physician value database to generate and disseminate information pieces to students and residents through a variety of social media outlets. Interestingly, student and resident membership rose in the society, and applications for sub-specialty training also saw a bump. The society was pleased with the information and membership benefits that flowed from Phairify’s platform.

“Providing medical students and residents access to our society’s physician compensation and productivity information was a boon for membership and sub-specialty training applications. Having access to this information allows trainees to make more informed career decisions, and our society was happy to deliver this information to them.”

Benefits & Results

• Data–informing decisions: Phairify allows the collection of up-to-date, specialty-specific compensation and productivity information, which can be used to inform important career decisions.
• Data–supporting effective communication: Specialty societies can increase their engagement with students and residents by communicating important information about their specialty’s trends in compensation and productivity.