It’s no secret that the financial burden is weighing heavily on the minds of medical students and residents:
Kaufman said that physician pay, while good compared with other professions, varies by regions. He recently saw a job posting in the Midwest that would double his salary. Medical students with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt gravitate toward places like that in order to survive. The physician climate in the region is such that reimbursements are routinely low for care being provided and getting ahead is not as easy as it used to be, said Kaufman.
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{ 4 comments }
A shortage of supply (physicians) or a surplus of demand?
i am not in it for the money and i think anyone that is should not be in medicine. i just want to help people. i would be fine making the average american income. its about saving lives, helping people. you need to consider it volunteering your time in order to change the world.
Meanwhile, the bank that loaned me the money for medical school, the owner of the office space, the malpractice insurer, the utility company, the office help, the furniture store, the office supply store, the property tax collector, the family grocer, the car dealer–not of these people are interested in volunteering their goods or time so you or I can “change the world” by helping Billy Bob squeze a few more months out of his much abused body.
Payment is how this society values goods and services. That doesn’t mean that anything not paid is not worthwhile–but it does think that others aren’t putting much value on it. If what you are doing is serving society, and they will not pay you for it, then they obviously don’t think much of the value of your service.
I grew up poor and am fine with making an average income–as long as I do it with an average work ethic, the average privelege of calling in sick to go to the beach, provision of average benefits, pension, and sick leave. The average privelege of being left alone when the whistle blows at the end of the shift, average levels of personal responsibility, and an average educational and training time and energy. But the practice of quality and ethical medicine demands much much more than average.
I earn near the bottom of the typical income for physicians and am happy with that. But were I unable to earn at least in the general income range of other professions, like accounting, engineering, and law, which are much less personally demanding, I would quit and do something else, something more “average.” If I were a firefighter or a policeman, I would have been saving lives and helping people, with benefits, paid vacation, and a great pension. In fact, I would already be retired instead of looking at another 20 years or more.
So many physicians we work with take jobs in the middle of nowhere to make good money for a year or two before they end up bored to tears and having to move back to a big city.
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