Top-notch Orthopedic Surgeons can be tough to recruit under the best of circumstances, let alone when you are recruiting for a hard-to-fill rural vacancy. While these recruits may require some unique approaches, research suggests that there are a few simple strategies you can employ to attract these surgeons.

1. Provide Competitive Pay

It's no surprise that competitive pay is a strong attractant for many Physician candidates. To ensure that you both attract and retain quality candidates, it is important to offer competitive pay that can rival urban level salaries for your rural position. According to Salary.com, the average pay for a practicing Orthopedic Surgeon is $484,210 annually but can jump up to $626,000 a year based on factors like a surgeons' education and experience levels.

2. Incentivize the Position Well

To increase your vacancy's appeal, it is vital to enhance the incentive package you offer. The top reported incentive for rural practitioners today is loan repayment¹. This perk is most popular amongst younger Physicians seeking relief from their high levels of medical school student loan debt.

3. Emphasize Your Friendly Workplace Environment

Long hours and sky-high surgical stress levels make a friendly workplace especially attractive to surgeons. Be sure to illustrate your organization's stability by sharing your positive long-term retention rates, team-building strategies, and factors that make it a friendly and collegial work environment^1.

4. Highlight Your Community's Advantages

^{The University of Colorado School of Medicine evaluated factors valued by young Physicians considering careers in rural medicine and found that emphasizing a community's benefits and clinical coverage could increase recruiting success rates*.}

• Talk About Your Community's Access to Larger Cities – Jobs with ready access to the amenities of a larger city are considerably more attractive than isolated communities.
• Highlight the Community Perks – Everyone wants the best for their families. Communities with good schools and available shopping are more likely to attract both candidates and their spouses when looking at employment opportunities.
• Emphasize the Community Need & Support for Physicians – To increase your position's appeal, consider highlighting your community's need for a local surgeon while also expressing how much they will be appreciated and relied upon for their services.

5. Provide Good Clinical Coverage

Organizations that provide surgeons with supportive levels of clinical coverage have an added advantage when recruiting. This makes it essential to promote the coverage you can provide while also highlighting any additional options like access to consulting colleagues and telemedicine modalities that can make their job easier.