The Faculty Retention Crisis
The Numbers Are Alarming
Academic medicine has a retention problem, and it is getting worse. A 2022 survey published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings found that nearly one in five physicians intended to leave their practice within two years. In academic settings, where the demands of clinical work stack on top of research, teaching, and institutional service, the pressure is even more intense.
I talk to faculty across the country who are exhausted. Not because they chose the wrong career, but because the system around them makes it nearly impossible to sustain.
Why Faculty Leave
When I ask physicians why they left an academic position, the answers are remarkably consistent. It is rarely about money. It is about feeling unsupported.
They describe being handed growing clinical loads with no conversation about tradeoffs. They talk about opaque promotion processes that nobody helped them navigate. They mention the loneliness of figuring out leadership, time management, and career strategy entirely on their own.
The pattern is clear. Institutions invest heavily in recruiting talented faculty and then do almost nothing to help them thrive once they arrive.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
Replacing a single physician costs an institution anywhere from $500,000 to over $1 million when you account for recruitment, onboarding, lost revenue, and the disruption to teams and patients. Multiply that by the number of faculty walking out the door each year, and you start to see the scale of the problem.
But the financial cost is only part of it. Every departure erodes institutional knowledge, disrupts mentoring relationships, and signals to remaining faculty that leaving might be the rational choice.
What Actually Helps
This is not a mystery. The faculty who stay tend to describe a few things in common. They had someone in their corner. They had honest conversations about their career trajectory. They felt like their institution saw them as a whole person, not just a revenue line.
That is what coaching does. It gives faculty a structured space to think through the decisions that matter most, with someone who understands the landscape and has no institutional agenda.
I have seen coaching help faculty who were six months from leaving decide to stay, not because anything magical happened, but because someone finally helped them get clarity on what they needed and how to ask for it.
Institutions Cannot Afford to Wait
The retention crisis is not going to fix itself. The physicians leaving today are not the ones who could not cut it. They are often the most talented, the most in demand, and the ones with the most options.
If your institution is losing good people and wondering why, the answer is probably not better compensation packages. It is better support.
If this resonates with your experience, whether you are a faculty member feeling stuck or a leader watching your department thin out, I am happy to talk about it.
