The Rocket Scientist

Those who have heard my talk, Who Do You Say That You Are, know that the meaning of work is something I love to discuss. Following a deep dive into the topic of employee turnover during my doctoral studies (and if you’ve ever completed a doctoral dissertation, you understand those depths!) thinking critically about the meaning of work was a natural progression.

The uptick in employee turnover, especially in healthcare, after the COVID pandemic hasn’t gone away.  As my own research showed, the experiences of employees during the pandemic strongly impacted the way they view their career decisions.

For some, leaving healthcare entirely was the only way to escape the mental and emotional turmoil caused by a massive global health crisis. For others, the result was less obvious. As one participant from my study explained: “I realized changing jobs was easier than I thought. There were more openings than I expected. I didn’t have to be stuck in one position my whole career.”

An unexpected result of the pandemic was greater empowerment to leave jobs that are not satisfying in favor of something better.  Not sticking with the same organization out of a perceived need for loyalty became more accepted – even expected!  Leaders should not be surprised.  The death and burial of the pension plan in favor of transferrable 401(k)s and 403(b)s should have been a clear precursor to this trend.

Some recent facts:

• 2025 research from Jackson Search and LT.com exposed that across 1,200 surveyed providers, 1/3 say they plan to leave their current employer in the next 1-3 years.

  
  

• According to 2025 Q1 CHG Advisory Analysis data, the average health system will lose $54 million this year due to physician vacancies.  That is an 11% loss increase from 2024 due to increased turnover.

  
  

In other words, turnover in healthcare is NOT slowing post-COVID.

I’ve also noticed an increase in discussion on the topic of “calling”, especially in medicine. The “Healthcare Assumption” that I discuss in Who Do You Say That You Are is socially pervasive and inaccurate. We tend to baselessly associate calling with competency – especially for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Many of you have heard me give two examples of physicians I know: one who strongly identifies medicine as his calling and another who never wanted to be a doctor, neither of those classifications being an indication of their competency on the job.

In April 2025, I presented this talk at the Becker’s 15th Annual Meeting in Chicago.  The topic often entices audience members to share their stories with me. A leader in addiction medicine shared how he was proudly one of the “calling” physicians and noted how tied his job is to his personal identity.  A couple years shy of 70, he knows that retirement will be coming. “Who will I be if I’m no longer practicing medicine?” he pondered out loud.

I think back to the words of Jimmy Turner, MD, the “Physician Philosopher” who has written about the physician identity crisis in his blog. “Being a doctor is a good thing. However, you must root yourselves in things of substance. Hospitals will not always love you back. Therefore, we must not lose our identity within its walls,” Dr. Turner writes in this article.

Another physician leader asked me at Becker’s if he could share his story with me.  If there’s something I can’t get enough of, it’s hearing people’s career journeys. He opened by saying that he never wanted to be a doctor.  I’ve learned to never be shocked by this statement, but I suspect some of his colleagues would have been surprised.

He wanted to be a rocket scientist.

Not in the sense that I wanted to be an ice cream truck driver – a career that sounded fun as a child.  No, he wanted to be a rocket scientist for real.

He was always very strong in the areas of engineering and physics, and his interest in rocket science grew through his high school years. This could have been a very real career path, but he was told in no uncertain terms by his father that medicine was the only job that would guarantee he could feed his family. Glumly, he took his father’s advice. After a few years of practice, he found that he did like being a physician.  It wasn’t that bad.  And at the current age of 47, he’s made a name for himself in the field.

But I asked him after he was done sharing, “Do you still want to be a rocket scientist?”

Sheepishly, and with a shrug that was betrayed by a huge smile, he answered in the affirmative.

As Lee Hardy says in his book The Fabric of this World, “one need not have a paid occupation in order to have a (calling). All of us have, at any one time, a number of (callings) - and only one of them might be a paid occupation.”

It may seem easier to retain an employee who views their job as their calling, but things can change, both with that employee and in your organization. Employees who do not see their job as their calling – such as our wannabe rocket scientist – can absolutely be retained and find job satisfaction. It’s just not likely to come from a leader who assumes only those who feel a calling will thrive.