When recruiting in healthcare, it’s commonly much harder to entice candidates to rural over urban areas. The bright light of the big city often entices candidates who are seeking a career in the healthcare field. What may be less apparent are the benefits of working in a more rural setting. What are those benefits and how can you market them to candidates?
Benefits for Healthcare Professionals Who Work in a Rural Setting
You can use the following five benefits to help “sell” the candidates to your FQHC. This could include:
Higher quality of life.
Most rural healthcare facilities offer lucrative salaries that can compete with their urban counterparts. This is particularly true because money stretches further in rural communities where the cost of living is lower. Affordable housing is a real problem in more urban settings, but also so is crime, overpopulation, and stress. Imagine no traffic on your way to work and you begin to understand the more relaxed dynamics of the rural healthcare setting.
Real patient relationships.
Rural healthcare settings allow you to get to know patients at all stages of their lives. There’s a real sense of community that is often missing from urban healthcare settings. You will be a respected part of the community in a setting that is anything but anonymous. Doctors and other healthcare professionals are truly respected members of these facilities. You will face less of the frantic pace you’d experience in a more urban setting. You’ll also find greater purpose in a community-based provider setting with a mission to serve vulnerable populations.
Better health and less stress.
We know how prevalent burnout is in healthcare today and we’d like to think that a more rural environment contributes less to burnout than a more urban setting. Given that 40 million American adults have some form of anxiety disorder, could it be possible that a slower lifestyle and a more sedate setting could help reset their mental and physical health? What’s more, the skills of professionals working in rural settings is greatly appreciated by the communities they serve. These are all great selling points and reasons to come work at an FQHC.
Lower or no student loans.
Rural healthcare facilities offer loan payment/debt forgiveness if you serve in a federally designated Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA). Why should this be attractive to your healthcare candidates? When you consider the average medical school student graduates with $241,000 in debt, which is six times the amount owed by any college graduate, having that debt reduced or eliminated is a huge benefit.
Greater experience.
The patients you see and the tasks you’ll handle in an FQHC are much more varied than in other types of organizations. Becoming a jack-of-all-trades in the medical field only adds to your value for employers. For the new graduate, being able to discern what types of patients they ultimately want to serve is part of the process. But working at an FQHC lets you have the best of everything, from pediatrics to geriatrics, along with a wider scope of illness and injury.
Find Top FQHC Talent Today!
As you can see, attracting candidates to rural healthcare may not be as hard as you think. UHC Solutions specializes in working with community healthcare providers. We can help you promote your organization to top candidates. Start the conversation with our team of leading FQHC recruiters to find out more.
