Rheumatology

They deal with auto-immune disease, for the most part. These would include:

Any vascultitis known to man, (Wegener's, Churg-Strauss, etc.), fibromyalgia, and lupus.

They also treat other arthridities in addition to Rheumatoid Arthritis, including Osteoarthritis, Psoriatic Arthritis, etc.

They are immunosuppressant wizards.

Hope that helps.

Why are rheumatologists paid so little? Averages that I have seen are in the 140-160K neighborhood. Our medicine program director gave a lunchtime talk about residency stuff and made a joke that "you actually decrease your salary by doing a rheumatology fellowship after IM". Doesn't make sense to me - can anyone tell me why this is so?

Rheumatologists tend to take care of patients with complex and time consuming medical problems.They dont have much in the way of lucrative procedures to perform like cardiologists and GI, and their skills... so called "cognitive" ones are sadly not reimbursed well.So they potentially may spend more time seeing fewer patients than a general internist and make less money.Its well suited for academic types.

Rheumatologists can make significant amount of money if they go from a diagnositic practice to a procedure oriented practice, such as injecting pressure points in patients with fibromyalgia(which many insurance companines are trying to not allow reimbursement).

I think most rehumatologists went into the field not to make money but because of a genuine interest in the field so most don't turn to doing such procedures to make a living rather relying on taking care of RA, Lupus, OA, and other chronically ill patients.

It's too bad that doctors are not rewarded for practicing what they were trained to do, which is to use what they learned to heal patients. Instead, because of the way the compensation system is set up, it's much more profitable for the doctor to do something that may not be better for the patient but is faster for the doctor.