After residency?

[BrainHealth]

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For those of graduating soon, I'm looking for advice on jobs (in the "real world") and interviews. What types of things should we be trying to find out about the different jobs? I'm looking mostly at inpatient positions with some outpatient work. I have been advised to see how many patients are seen daily and what the allotted time is for each patient (for outpt intake vs therapy vs med mgmt etc). I imagine there must be many more things that do not occur to me because I'm new to this.

I saw the thread about discrepancies in psychiatrist salaries. Much of it seemed to be from 2003, so I'm looking for more recent numbers. As best I can tell, new grads are making 160k-220k. Private practice and cash-only continue to pull in more (300-500k? who knows, not for me). I wonder if any other recent grads or other nearly-grads have a better sense for what is out there. I have read that the discrepancy between male and female psychiatrists persists at about 10-20k per year!! The explanation tends to be that females don't negotiate the way males do. I don't know if that is true, but it is difficult to negotiate if you don't even know your own going rate - and especially in the medical world where we just spent 8 years being reminded how little we were worth! 😉

Thanks for any help!

(Apologies if posts multiple times, can't seem to get the thread up)

 

[BrainHealth]

Of course the next resource I check says 130k-180k for psychiatrists, regardless of how far out from training. So difficult to get a handle on that!

 

[nitemagi]

I'm looking at positions in SoCal, such as County jobs, Kaiser, etc.

Most appear to start in the 180-200 range, the higher end once boarded. Some are fixed salary, some leave room for raises.

 

[whopper]

Some places offer to pay off loans. The place I currently work, they will pay off loans and the money given for this is not taxed. You got to factor this in because in real money, this could be, in effect, getting something on the order of $25K per year.

My current job with the state has a loan repayment program. If that's factored into the pay, the pay is extremely competitive. Problem for me is that by 2012, I'll have all my loans paid off. I'm not one of those types with over $100K in loans. If I were, it'd be worth it for me to stay with the state.

Private practice, IMHO, is not for everybody. You got to worry about a lot of things that most doctors I've noticed have no skill in managing such as employees, business decisions, running a facility, making sure the toilet seats are wiped, etc. If you can do this, fine. If not, don't go into it or at least work in a PP at first to figure out the learning curve before you put the investment into it.

A few people here have mentioned aspirations for starting a private practice even while being a resident. I've touched upon this before. All I can say is watch Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (the UK version), and after a few episodes, you'll see why I think that's a bad idea. Just because a guy can cook a hamburger doesn't mean he can run a restaurant. Same thing with PP.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

A few other things to think/ask about:
Personal and CME time. Keep in mind that you can take all the time you want--but it will cost you. I was also worried about coverage--can you get coverage easily when you want it? (Advantage of a large group, we even have administrative staff to coordinate this, ensure fairness with respect to popular weeks off, etc...)
Benefits--always a biggie. Beyond health and dental, don't forget disability and term life insurance...
CME accounts. (Since we have full EMR and remote access, you can even buy home computer equipment with this)
Board fees--(saved myself thousands of $$ by getting a place that paid for my Part II and speciality board. I'd already passed Part I, but they would've covered that too)
Other paid expenses--malpractice, licensing, DEA, hospital staff dues (where I am theses are actually reimbursed in addition to my personal CME expenses--I just have to make sure it's filed on time).