Meaningful employability of older medical specialists

Professional performance and meaningful employability of older medical specialists
dr. Eva Knies i.s.m. prof. dr. Peter Leisink, prof. dr. Margriet Schneider, dr. Liesbeth van Rensen, prof. dr. Toon Taris

As a result of the rising retirement age, academic hospitals are challenged to facilitate the professional performance of older medical specialists in a meaningful way. Medical specialists are ‘classic’ highly-skilled professionals. However, there are reasons to study their professional performance and sustainable employability from the perspective of the organization and the perspective of individual older medical specialists themselves. These reasons include an increasing organizational complexity, the physical and mental strain in medical specialists’ work, and the fact that medical specialists are the hospital’s human capital, but at the same time their horizontal mobility seems limited.

It is expected that there are considerable differences with the group of older medical specialists (45 years and older). These differences might be related to individual characteristics (age, vitality, workability, resilience, etc.), work and organizational characteristics (surgical and non-surgical jobs, support from colleagues, support from the supervisor, HR policies and practices, etc.), and expectations and attitudes (regarding the age of retirement, personal development, etc.).

The central question of this study is: what are opportunities and conditions for productive and professional employment of older medical specialists that contributes to the performance of academic hospitals and that older medical specialists themselves consider to be meaningful?

More information about this research, see In gesprek met Eva Knies.