Over the last couple of years, members of this community have discussed whether medical schools and teaching hospitals have felt the impact of workforce changes as acutely as other industries. Are we feeling a great resignation? Or a reshuffle? Or a disengagement?
We don’t have the answer—but we welcome your thoughts!
And in this Tip Tuesday we provide a brief definition of terms to aid your thinking:
- The Great Resignation: coined during the pandemic, explains the trend of many people quitting their jobs, perhaps due to mass introspection on quality of life and a search for more meaningful work
- The Great Retirement: some experts think that the Great Resignation was actually a Great Retirement—that many of the people quitting their jobs were quitting the workforce for good. Others define this term as the large number of tail end baby boomers retiring.
- The Great Reshuffle: Research shows that many of the “great resign-ers” were actually changing occupations or industries and that this resulted in a major workforce talent reshuffle
- The Great Refusal: academics know that this is a very old term, but some are using it right now to describe employees’ refusal to accept bad jobs with low pay
- The Great Relocation: the pandemic’s effect on urban areas, a widespread embrace of telework, and a renewed focus on health and wellbeing has shifted population centers and resulted in widespread relocation of the workforce
- The Great Faculty Disengagement: In higher education we’ve seen this phenomenon (some might call this “quiet quitting”), which is essentially a withdrawal from certain aspects of a job or a break in the emotional connection to a job
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Janet Stiles
Sr. Director, Member Engagement & AAMC CareerConnect
Association of American Medical Colleges
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