From Contract to Connection: How Authentic Relationships Foster Early-Career Physician Loyalty and Retention

When a newly signed physician departs within the first few years, the impact rolls through access, continuity, costs, and morale. Schedules fray, patient panels stall, referrals wobble, and leaders re-spend time and money to refill the same seat. Retention starts at recruitment and is reinforced in the early weeks and months of a physician’s first job. Yet, the critical problem of physician turnover continues to face nearly every healthcare organization, and it begs for new answers.

Jackson Physician Search and Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) conducted online surveys about engagement, commitment, and retention with physicians and administrative leaders in July and August 2025, with responses received from 284 physicians and 241 administrative leaders. The new research maps the fault lines that move early-career physicians out of their first jobs so soon: thin pre-boarding, bureaucracy dressed as process, mentorship in name only, and skewed expectations that allow support for new physicians to slip.

From Contract to Connection: How Authentic Relationships Foster Early-Career Physician Loyalty and Retention asks a hard, practical question: how do medical groups turn a signed contract into a durable connection that keeps early-career physicians engaged from pre-boarding through the first years? What follows is a blueprint to turn first days into belonging, so the calling that brought physicians into medicine can breathe and flourish where they have chosen to work.