Confused about the Match?

Still, many residents and doctors say the match improves on the haphazard process that preceded it.


damn right

 

And the system that eventually replaces it should be better too.

 

Don't you love how the NYTimes focus primarily on HMS students... wow, these students must be soooo representative of the majority of those trying to match

The H-Bomb will always come through

 

Huh?

 

What's minimum wage these days, $5-$6 an hour? Residents make waaaay over that. Sounds fair to me, what is there to be confused about?

 

I think $10/hour is not fair pay for residents.
Why do I say this?
Well I'm an EMT and I work for a private company. My pay is $12.50 an hour. The starting pay is $12.00 and goes up by .25 every year.

How is it fair that a resident gets paid less than an EMT?

 

IMO, for the amount of work and the amount of hours we will be putting in at the hospital, $39,800 is peanuts. Basically, after we graduate from med school we become the b****es of the health care system for awhile.

Yeah, good call. But would you expect anything less from the media?

 

And even more ironic that it's a URM from Harvard.

 

Actually, it wasn't so much the NYTimes that chose to focus on HMS as it was the authors... It's a freelance article written by Alexi Wright and Ingrid Katz, two first-year internal medicine residents at a Harvard-affiliated hospital, thus explaining the Harvard connection. In case you missed it, they also kept a week-long journal in Slate about their experiences as interns. Really well-written stuff...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2094977/entry/2095201/

 

You work for a private company. This is a huge distinction. Hospitals all over the country are operating in the red and many have closed down. Teaching hospitals are some of the hardest hit. There simply isn't enough money to raise the salaries of the tens of thousands of residents working in the U.S. If it keeps my hospital from closing down, they can pay me as little as they want as long as I can live off of it. As a doctor-in-training, I'll be spending the same amount of time on the wards regardless of my salary.

 

O you can live off of it...but what about loans?

 

Your residency is paid for by the Federal government, it is a subsidized program that covers the expense of training you as a doctor, and the pay increases with your increased level of ability. When you are an intern you have barely scratched to surface your training as a doctor, you are as much a liability to the hospital training you as you are an aid to them. Your residency is a training program that pays you, remember that. As residents you are still essentially a student with increasing ability to practice your trade independently, but an advanced student nonetheless. The match is designed to place you into the highest program that interviewed you and wants you. It is biased in your favor. Without the match the process would never guarantee you getting into a better program because programs like private jobs could force you to commit at any time in the process. In the days before the match some programs where full years in advance with current MS3s and even MS2s. Because you pay is part of federal subsidy there is no guarantee that you will make anymore money without the match, but you can be sure that getting into a program will be a far more unfair process.