More doctors are putting off retirement until well after 65 years
Retirement is fast losing its appeal for medical practitioners, with age 65 coming and going for many.
Doctors these days just are not retiring when they hit 65, and there are a multitude of reasons they want to stay in the profession, including self-worth.
Associate professor Jo Earl of Flinders University’s business school says doctors are retiring later than the general population, with the median age for men being 70 and for women 68. The number of doctors aged over 65 also has risen by 80 per cent since 2004.
Earl says many medical professionals at the pinnacle of their career stay in the profession because they started later than other professionals, due to study and specialisations, and are not ready to retire.
Others have concerns about whether they can support their lifestyle without a high income, many do not want to lose their medical identity and some struggle to plan for a replacement or transition to a younger doctor in a regional practice.
“We have an ageing population and it’s reflected in older doctors generally,” Earl says.
“Doctors are delaying retirement but you can see there’s a difference between older Australians who are retiring and doctors who are retiring even later. They’re breaking the mould.”
Despite earning significant salaries — many over the $1 million mark in the later years — Earl says some are concerned about whether they will have enough saved to maintain their lifestyle after retiring. But while the high salary and a great lifestyle seem a given, she says superannuation and nest eggs can be relative.
“We’ve had people retire on $200,000 a year saying they don’t have enough and people with $40,000 saying they have enough,” she says. “It’s very much about experience and if you’ve been used to living off $1.4m a year and you’re suddenly living off $140,000 a year, it’s like going from $90,000 to $9000. It’s about their lifestyle.”
Earl does not advocate for a mandatory retirement age in the medical profession, arguing many late-career professionals have much to offer in terms of experience gained and understanding of the human condition. But she says many are not planning well for a transition to retirement.
Those who start earlier fare better, and Earl says more stories need to be told about successful transitions. She says many could consider cutting hours to part time, realigning their skills towards administration, university lecturing, further studies such as an MBA or managing practices.
“There’s an opportunity for people to future-proof their careers,” she says.
Another factor is having a community identity as a GP who cares and helps others. It can be difficult to let go or find an alternative hobby. Many plan to take up new activities, but Earl says only 25 per cent do so because they have not established adequate networks.
International workforce planning expert Julie Sloan says there is a worldwide problem with medical staffing, including in Britain, where more health professionals are leaving every year than being replaced. One response is flexible staffing, where older workers are encouraged to cut their hours to make way for new entrants.
But Sloan says that can often lead to trust issues. “The end-career worker, they don’t trust that their leader is not going to say, ‘We’re going to make your role redundant because you’ve shown less interest in working,’ ” she says. “It’s about trust.”
Sloan says offering a transition to part-time work could be successful if trust is established along with an endpoint — such as a three-year contract — that they can renew at the end or retire.
With an increasing number of late-career medicos continuing to work, Sloan says the medical profession should be workforce planning, considering its needs and how best to support its workers.
She says retirement is not about age, it is about working life stages, with job design critical. Part of that is asking doctors what they want to do with their careers, and helping them plan for change.
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AFTER 17 YEARS OF STUDY MILLS HAS NO PLANS TO RETIRE SOON
Melbourne-based doctor Chris Mills is already thinking of longevity in his medical career.
At just 35 and still working on his specialisation, he is planning a wide variety of work during the coming decades.
Mills, who works about 70 hours a week, has been studying for the past 17 years and, aside from his medical degree, he has a graduate diploma in medical education, a masters of business, a bachelor of science, is in his second year of a law degree and is undertaking a specialisation in gastroenterology in intensive care at the Austin Hospital.
“I’m future-proofing, which is one of the reasons why I’ve taken on study in alternative medical careers,” Mills says. “I’ve seen what happens to older doctors and business people when they stop work. A lot of their identity as professional people comes from work. Even if it’s maintaining a small proportion of work, I think it’s important to do that and we have something to offer.”
As with many doctors who study specialisations and enter the workforce fully qualified in their 30s rather than 20s, Mills says he understands why doctors retire late.
“Medical professionals are notoriously late into the workforce because of study and now having to do an undergraduate degree and then medicine and a specialisation,” he says. “By the time you become settled, you’re mid-career compared to business people. They’ve had 15 years to expand a job and consider what they’re doing in retirement.
“Medicine is such a diverse pathway that you come to late and all of a sudden you’re 50 and thinking, ‘I don’t know if I have long in this profession’.”
While medicine will always be his primary role, he is considering moving into medical education or management later in his career.
He has seen older doctors struggle with retirement and letting go of their career, and would like a transition to part-time work to be easier for older medicos, or more value placed on the expertise they can offer younger medical professionals in education, management or mentoring.