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How much do Residents get paid and what are the hours like? How long do they last?
How Much Do Residents Get Paid?
- Thread starter IWant2BeADoctor
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C
Critical Mass
Agree. It depends a lot on specialty.
Some schools use a standard pay scale for all residents. You get a raise with each year of experience.
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Generally between 40-50k. It does vary like what was said above, and you're pay goes up as you gain more years. Theoretically this should be enough to live on, especially considering that a large portion of your time is spent working in the hospital, but if you talk to many residents, it rarely is enough.
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Its enough money if:
1. you defer loan payments until after residency
2. you don't have to support a family
3. you live in an area with a low cost of living
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salary: 40-50K
Hours: by law you cannot work more than 24 straight hours and you cannot work more than 80 hours per week now (some programs I'm sure break these laws by at least a little).
80 hrs/week X 52 weeks/year = 4,160 hours/year
50,000 dollars/ 4,160 hours = $12.02/hour and that is assuming top pay and maximum hours.
No matter how you look at it you aren't getting paid much.
Hours: by law you cannot work more than 24 straight hours and you cannot work more than 80 hours per week now (some programs I'm sure break these laws by at least a little).
80 hrs/week X 52 weeks/year = 4,160 hours/year
50,000 dollars/ 4,160 hours = $12.02/hour and that is assuming top pay and maximum hours.
No matter how you look at it you aren't getting paid much.
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Nitpick: not by law, except in New York State, but by ACGME accreditation rules.
Sucks when you look at it like that.... and that's not considering overtime in a non-salaried job gets paid time and a half... Which if you factor that in, you make a little less than $10 an hour. YAY!!!
Almost makes me want to keep my current job...
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You are more likely to be getting low 40s than 50 in your initial year of residency. Also bear in mind that the 80 hrs/wk does not include the hours you will be spending at home looking things up/studying up.
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Correction, you can't admit new patients for more than 24 consecutive hours, you can stay an additional 6 hours past that working on already admitted patients or for clinic. So you can come in on one day at 7 am, work overnight call till 7 am the next day and then stay until 1pm that afternoon followin up on patients alread admitted or seeing outpatients in clinic.
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Deferment of loans of loans during residency is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, it's very tough for a lot of people unless they take out over 130 K in loans. You'll get by... but don't expect to start saving for your yacht.
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just think of it as experience for the real world
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do you mean paid in respect?
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cause the answer is 0.
E
Eric Lindros
how much do residents get laid?
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E
Eric Lindros
man, I did this based on Grey's Anatomy. If I don't get a piece at least once every other on call night I will be so dissapointed
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only have to take out +$130,000 to get loans deferred until after residency? sweet cause i'm looking at around $265,000 worth of IOUs by the time this is all said and done (private school in NY living off campus in manhattan 3rd and 4th year getting dual MD/MPH)
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Dear Pre-med or Medical Student,
We at the International Brotherhood of Taco and Salsa Workers have fought long and hard for the working conditions of Taco Assemblers, Gordita Stuffers, and all those who labor in the Tex-Mex fast food industry and after years of successful lobbying in Congress are happy to report to the membership that our salaries and benefits are at an all-time high, exceeding, on an hourly basis, even those of some doctors, particularly General Surgery Residents.
In fact, when you look at pay, hours, working conditions, and respect an exciting career in the Taco industry just makes sense. Consider this:
- Interesting work with a variety of challenges.
- Close interaction with the public.
- Plenty of procedures. (Frymaster operation, Chalupa systems, "Sour Cream Gun," to name a few).
- Shift work.
- No call, ever.
- Respect from your employer enforced through OSHA and various state labor laws.
- Early exposure to foodborne illnesses, their diagnosis, and public health implications.
- Early exposue to "restaurant" Spanish.
- Competitive pay and benefits with overtime and holidays.
Sincerely,
Juan Guadaloupe y Garcia
Vice-President for Public Relations
International Brotherhood of Taco and Salsa Workers
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You're getting your loans based on the IOU system? Boy, here's to hoping they lose the paper. Or you could just say you had your fingers crossed when you signed it...
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people who claim that isn't enough money are whiners...plain and simple. i live in chicago and the majority of my working friends (myself included) started out with entry-level business jobs paying $25-$30k and had no problems paying rent and other expenses, paying undergrad loan payments and still having a social life. it's not an ideal salary compared to a physician's salary, but the pay during residency, especially considering meal allowances are generally given, is plenty fair pay and plenty of money to live on.
Z
zimmie256
I have a related question... I was wondering about pay and hours during fellowships if you choose to do one. I'm sure there is variability by specialty and geographical region, but I'm just looking for ballpark estimates. Thanks!
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For T.H.E. loans, you are allowed to defer for the following reasons:
1)When you are enrolled at least half-time in a course of study at an eligible school
2)When you are unemployed
3)When the ratio of your income to your monthly payment meets a certain threshold. (This deferment is common when fulfilling a residency requirement.) But to know whether you meet the correct threshold, you have to pass the two tests in the following link:
https://www.theloanprogram.org/tlc/Calculators/HardshipCalc.aspx
Whether I pass the threshold or not, I would rather try to start paying the loan off during residency. I just hate the idea of interest compound and compound and then being capitalized after my residency. There are plenty of American families that live on $25K a year.
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Families of graduate students.
Those TA's don't get paid too much, yet I know some of them have 3+ kids and a spouse. Insane.- Joined
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I have a related question... I was wondering about pay and hours during fellowships if you choose to do one. I'm sure there is variability by specialty and geographical region, but I'm just looking for ballpark estimates. Thanks!
Too much variability to really say. The pay is based on your PGY level for that particular institution (I make a little over $57,000 which is more than my residency pay but I live in a much more expensive area) and the hours will depend on your fellowship. For example, I take no in house call, no weekends and work a very reasonable schedule. My ex was a trauma fellow and frequently was in-house (usually q3) but also had to stay if any of his patients needed to go back to the OR; he often worked more than 120 hrs per week (not all fellowships are ACGME approved so the work regulations do not apply to them) and took a pay cut of $7 K/year from his residency (different hospital, different pay scales).
So "ballpark" would be from around the high 40s to as high as 75K/year, depending on program, area, etc.
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Mmmm...I take offense to that. My family hit a rough patch a few years ago in which my parents were living on around 15K/year. We are a family of 4, and we received no governmental assistance during the time. It is possible, as long as you don't live in an expensive area of the country (I'm thinking NY or California). Sure, there were no luxuries but there were no rats and roaches. It was (barely) enough to pay for bills and food.
I figure if my parents can make that work for a family of 4, I should have no trouble living on 40K/year as a childless single person.
Now, whether the 40K/year is a fair salary for the work we are expected to do is another story....
8
8744
With respect, you don't know jack. first of all, it's not a question of it being "enough" money. "Enough" is a meaningless term. If I were single with no kids I could probably survive on $10,000 per year if I could eat for free and shower at the hospital. I could live in my car, you understand, and my only expenses would be insurance, car payments, toiletries, and gas.
When you apply for a job, you do not "lowball" your salary expectations. In other words, if your prospective employer slides a piece of paper across the desk with $56,000 written in it, you don't cross it out and say, "Gosh, Mr. Smith, that's more than I need. $25,000 would be more than enough to provide for my basic needs and leave me a little left over for a social life."
Second of all, "Meal Allowances" are not generally given. They are not uncommon of course. I eat for free at my current program which has to be good for four or five thousand bucks a year. On the other hand, I'd rather have the four or five thousand bucks and brown-bag it. I could buy a years worth of peanut butter sandwiches and chips for $500 and pocket the rest. It is only a benefit because we are trapped at the hospital every fourth night like caged animals. If the working conditions were better I'd go home for lunch and get home for dinner every evening.
At Duke, where I did my intern year there was no meal allowance except for a crappy $6.60 per night if you were on call. Big whoop.
As far as it being fair pay, again, you know less than jack. I am a PGY-2 and while I'll admit I wasn't much good for anything as a brand new intern, I have got to the point where I am doing real, billable work for the hopsital and the variosu services on which I rotate. I don't bill for my work, of course, but the attending physician does. My hospital pays moonlighting residents fifty bucks an hour to cover "gaps" in the call schedule. When I'm working my 70+ hour week I make about ten dollars an hour. How is that fair? Obviously the going rate for someone to cover gaps in the schedule is $50/hr which the hospital has to pay because they can't violate the work hour rules and therefore no longer have you by the gonads.
Or look at it this way. Let's assume that I am not trained up to the level of an attending (of course I'm not). If the residents weren't around and the hospital didn't want to pay hospitalists, they'd have to hire mid-levels (PAs, NPs) as physician extenders to do a lot of the work we do. What's the going rate for a PA, fesh out of PA school? $80,000 per year?
I am a lot better trained and capable than a PA and I make half of what they make. And I have a medical degree so I can make improtant decisions that mid-levels can't. (At my program, for example, our residents run the ICU with very little supervision at night.)
When you are pulling Friday-Sunday call and working like a dog more hours over the weekend than most people put in for a whole weekand then have to work a "normal" sixty hour week or when you go four weeks with only two days off, both of them post-call, low-down, no-good, cheating post-call days off slime back here and let us know how happy you are to make a stinking 10 bucks an hour on a job that will suck so hard it will make you physically ill.
Finally, I made $40,000 per year as a brand-new Civil Engineer fresh out of college way, way back in 1994. I make $40,000 now as a doctor with two years of training, and four years of undergraduate, two years of graduate school, and four years of medical school. Today, however, I have four kids, five dogs, a house, adult responsibilites, and the usual petty things that slowly bleed money from the family treasury.
4
45408
The real world works on a free market system, so this is anything but preparation for the real world. Seeing how a resident should be paid per hour at least as much as a nurse, and many of them work twice as much as a nurse, they would be making well over $100K as a resident.
Actually, I just figured out that if you worked 80 hours a week and were paid for overtime beyond 40 hours, that's 120 paid hours per week, and if you were paid the same as a nurse ($25/hr, starting), you'd be at $150,000.
Yeah, this is not at all experience for the real world.
EDIT - like Panda said, the moonlighting residents get paid $50 an hour. If you worked 80 hours a week with paid overtime, that'd be $300K per year. Yeah....$40,000 is REALLLL fair.
8
8744
Not to mention that, on average, your hospital gets $110,000 per year per resident from Medicare. What happens to the other $50,000 or so that doesn't go to your pay and benefits?
You see, you little suck-ups, the hospital starts out in the black with your subservient little ass. You may not be productive as an intern but you do fill a hole that would otherwise require somebody to be paid at least twice as much. And then, as you progress you start being productive and not only does your hospital realize a profit of $50,000 per year off of you but you start "extending" your attendings allowing them to bill for a lot more work than they could possibly do on their own.
And you still fill a hole (call) which would otherwise require paid help.
I've heard all the arguments. They all boil down to some variation of, "Well, yeah, but Look Dr. Bear, the hospital loses money on you in training costs and lost productivity. You are actually a drain to the system."
Oh yeah? In that case, mother****er, I'll just stop pulling call and limit my hours to forty per week (giving me time to make some serious moonlighting money at Home Depot) to avoid damaging the hospital any further.
I am on a hair-trigger on this topic because I am jsut getting done with one of the most brutal call months of my career where I worked so hard from 630AM to around 10AM the bext morning every fourth day that I was literally (from a combination or fatigue, dehydration, overwork, and boredom) physically ill by the time I got home.
You see, you little suck-ups, the hospital starts out in the black with your subservient little ass. You may not be productive as an intern but you do fill a hole that would otherwise require somebody to be paid at least twice as much. And then, as you progress you start being productive and not only does your hospital realize a profit of $50,000 per year off of you but you start "extending" your attendings allowing them to bill for a lot more work than they could possibly do on their own.
And you still fill a hole (call) which would otherwise require paid help.
I've heard all the arguments. They all boil down to some variation of, "Well, yeah, but Look Dr. Bear, the hospital loses money on you in training costs and lost productivity. You are actually a drain to the system."
Oh yeah? In that case, mother****er, I'll just stop pulling call and limit my hours to forty per week (giving me time to make some serious moonlighting money at Home Depot) to avoid damaging the hospital any further.
I am on a hair-trigger on this topic because I am jsut getting done with one of the most brutal call months of my career where I worked so hard from 630AM to around 10AM the bext morning every fourth day that I was literally (from a combination or fatigue, dehydration, overwork, and boredom) physically ill by the time I got home.
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http://www.ama-assn.org/vapp/freida/srch/
^
Lists most pay/hours/lots of other info, for most residencies/fellowships in the country.
Pay/hours suck as a resident, that's just the way it is.
^
Lists most pay/hours/lots of other info, for most residencies/fellowships in the country.
Pay/hours suck as a resident, that's just the way it is.
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Mmmmm... Peanut Butter and Jelly... mmmm...
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Well unfortunatley for some of us living in expensive areas, even with a 40K salary, you will still have to live with some unwanted roommates(rats and roaches). Let alone 25K.
8
8744
Idiot. In the real world a Hospitalist doing the exact same thing I do while on call makes anywhere from $120 to $180 per hour. A Critical Care Physician working in the ICU can make more than that and usually works shifts that are, if anything, better than we have in Emergency Medicine.
Additionally, with the exception of my beloved Marine Corps, I have never worked at a job in the so-called "real world" where I was expected to go without sleep and work 70+ hours per week for two years straight with no extra compensation whatsoever.
All of you pre-meds (even though this is your forum) may now, with respect, close yer' stinking cake holes until you get a little taste of our wonderful system of medical education.
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That is why resident doctors should have formed a union for the longest of time, but they think they are too cool for that. Plus they think it is a phase that will pass and they will get to the great land of abundance(attending). As the salary gap between attending and resident continues to close(and i don't mean due to increase in residents salary), at some point residents will probably have to form a union and start asking for some real money for their labor.
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8744
Mmmmm... Peanut Butter and Jelly... mmmm...
I am not jaded. Nor do I have any deep-seated angst or antipathy towards medical training. But the pay sucks and the hours are terrible.
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LOL panda, did you just get off call, or just get your last paycheck?! You don't sound too happy.
D
deleted87716
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You cannot generalize and say that everyone who makes $25 - $30K and complain is a whiner. If you're single and unattached and that's the most money you've ever made in your life - great for you! But not everybody's situation is that simple. Many people have varying familial and financial responsibilities that take more $30K per year to cater for.
I think your sense of fairness is somewhat twisted if you think working 80+ hours per week and getting paid $30K per year is fair. We are talking about trained professionals with at least 8 years of post-high school education under their belt. Even managers at places such as McDonald's and Walmart, many of whom only hold high school diplomas or GEDs, with far less training, working far less hours make about the same amount, if not more.
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I kind of understand where Panda is comming from. If you have ever had a "real" job or lived in the "real" world you will understand how awkward the whole resident doctor thing is. I work right now in a company where a 10 hour day is viewed as back-breaking and you have 14 sick days which everyone uses on top of their 3 week vacation. If I however do bust my tail, my raise will not be the usual 3% but something like 5%. You leave work at exactly 4pm unless you choose not to. This is the "real world", residency is outside the norm.
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8744
Well look, I am on a medicine month working for a service with minimal teaching and maximal labor. Last weekend I had call on Friday and Sunday which means, for those of you who don't know how it works:
Friday 630AM until Saturday 10AM: 27.5 Hours Sleep: 0 hours
Sunday 0730AM until Monday 11AM: 27.5 Hours Sleep: 0 hours
For a total of 55 Hours in Three days. I was physically ill when I got home on Saturday morning. Didn't really recover and was "ill-er" on Monday morning.
I had call on Tuesday of that week (read about it on my blog, the lastest article) and this week I have Thursday-Saturday Call which will be the same hours.
As I say on my blog, "call" is a misnomer. It's not call but "work" and the regular work day is a vacation compared to "call."
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I can't believe you can't live on 40K. Isn't the median American household income something along 50K lines? Plenty of FAMILIES across the country live on 40K per year.
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8
8744
Awww...poor Panda boo.
**Gives Panda a bear hug**
Just as long as you don't charge me for it.
D
deleted87716
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But (except residents) how many of these "American FAMILIES" work 80 hours or more per week for 40K per year?
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