Family Medicine’s Career Dashboard Ready for Prime Time

Tell Us About Your Experience Using New Tool

Dec. 15, 2023, Cindy Borgmeyer — Thinking about exploring your family medicine career options? Whether you’re looking for your first job out of residency or a new position that offers higher pay or better hours, seeking revisions to your current employment contract, or even considering pulling up stakes and relocating across the country, the AAFP’s Family Medicine Career Benchmark Dashboard can help you sort through your options. An exclusive AAFP member benefit, it’s up and running as of today!

Developed using salary, benefits, and job satisfaction data submitted by thousands of family physicians nationwide, the interactive dashboard can help you set realistic compensation expectations for the many career opportunities available in family medicine today based on factors such as age, race/ethnicity, gender identity, geographic location and more.

The depth and breadth of the data included in the dashboard makes it a valuable tool for physicians at any stage of their career, said Stacey Bartell, M.D., the AAFP’s medical director for career and practice. From physicians-in-training to FPs who’ve been practicing for years, the dashboard offers Academy members a comprehensive look at the current family medicine practice environment.

Nuts and Bolts

Here’s a brief overview of how it works:

The dashboard includes six main areas of interest to explore: demographics, compensation, satisfaction, work information, roles and secondary sources of income. Various filters (and their constituent options) within each of those sections allow users to drill down further to isolate the precise information they’re looking for.

For the Academy’s student members, for example, the tool provides a big-picture look at all family medicine has to offer by illuminating the diverse types of career pathways and roles that are available for family physicians, Bartell explained. Resident members, on the other hand, can dig deeper into the dashboard data to better prepare themselves for entering the workforce.

“I think if they review the dashboard before they interview,” she added, “it will give them ideas of what to ask about in regards to benefits, pay, work hours, etc.”

Armed with data on the various incentives available, CME reimbursement, vacation/sick/paid time off, parental benefits, ability to work remotely and other factors, residents gain valuable insights that can help them negotiate successfully. “If we understand what others are doing in the space we’re considering, it allows us to better evaluate an employment contract,” said Bartell.

In addition to helping users determine a fair salary range for evaluating a compensation package, the dashboard data also can serve as a benchmark to evaluate an employer’s offer or to make a counteroffer based on your value or expectations. Having this data at your fingertips reinforces your credibility and marketability by showing that you’ve done your research and you’re on top of industry standards and trends. In other words, it can put you in the driver’s seat — wherever you are in your practice journey.

Established physicians — those who are more than three years out of residency — and even those newer to practice can benefit from the compensation and career satisfaction insights the dashboard offers to optimize job searches, of course, Bartell noted. But there are other reasons users may want to consult the data. “For parents who may want part-time work while raising young families, or for anyone struggling to find work-life balance, it helps to understand all the different kinds of opportunities that exist out there,” she added.

As for more seasoned FPs: “I think for those later in their careers, it may give information on how they can still participate in medicine after they retire — such as via remote positions, teaching positions, consultant roles and the like,” Bartell said.

Be sure to check out the many other practice- and employment-related resources the AAFP has to offer. Here are just a few you might find helpful:

Do Us a Favor

AAFP News would love to hear from you about your experiences using the new career dashboard tool. So, after you’ve gotten in there to explore, please drop us a note at aafpnews@aafp.org to let us know what you think. We’ll pass your comments along to the dashboard team, and we may even reach out to you to see whether you’d like to share your thoughts with your AAFP colleagues.