Minimum Wage for Your Speciality

[HQAMIGO]

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What is the minimum amount of money that you would need to make in your specialty in order for you to practice it? Put in your top speciality choice along with salary number.

 

[HQAMIGO]

Radiology I expect 300K and over.

 

[digitalising]

Cardio, 150-200

 

[Habeed]

If you didn't get 300k, you would give up radiology and do something else? I interpret the question as : what is the minimum sum that would compensate you enough to go to work in the morning in the specialty? Assume that you'll work an administrative or teaching job instead if the pay were below this number.

Given that radiology reads are probably interesting, and occasionally even fun to do, I would guess that you'd wake up and go to work for substantially less than 300k. If you actually need that much incentive to drag yourself out of bed in the morning, you should pick something else.

 

[Guyton Killah]

Not much. After all I didn't chose medicine for money. N in the future i m gonna volunteer even more.

 

[lazycat]

anyway, i didnot choose medicine for becoming a millionair!enough income to continue my study and my research.... i dont care anything else....

 

[fahimaz7]

Radiology I expect 300K and over.

Private practice radiology, with IR, brings in well over 600.

 

[Steiner]

All I want is hugs and tears.

 

[Steiner]

From the car salesman, real estate agent, broker, etc...

 

[WellWornLad]

Radiology I expect 300K and over.

That's your "minimum?"

I'm sure radiology will mourn your loss...

 

[HQAMIGO]

c'mon people, I'm not motivated JUST by the money but if I am not making 300K mid career as a private practice radiologist working the usual number of hours lets say 60/wk than something is wrong. I mean i'd be willing to do academics and or work less hours for less money but given that general internal medicine is making around 200k, I dont think its too much to ask for 100K more for more competition and more training. I want to see what all the do-gooders in this forum are making 10 years from now.

 

[SB100]

So long as I can pay off the debt in a reasonable amount of time while supporting my family, I don't care how much I earn.

 

[dilated]

If you didn't get 300k, you would give up radiology and do something else? I interpret the question as : what is the minimum sum that would compensate you enough to go to work in the morning in the specialty?

Well it's a dumb question then. Part of the reason doctors are over a barrel is that there's very little they can do to respond to salary cuts - are you going to go get a job at mcdonalds? An administrative job probably pays terribly as well.

A more reasonable question would be how much would salary have to decrease before you changed what specialty you went into. If all doctors got 70% salary cuts I'd be on the lifestyle train heading to dermville.

 

[WellWornLad]

c'mon people, I'm not motivated JUST by the money but if I am not making 300K mid career as a private practice radiologist working the usual number of hours lets say 60/wk than something is wrong. I mean i'd be willing to do academics and or work less hours for less money but given that general internal medicine is making around 200k, I dont think its too much to ask for 100K more for more competition and more training. I want to see what all the do-gooders in this forum are making 10 years from now.

I just find it weird that your "minimum" is based on what other people are making. That sounds more like an expectation, which is a different question entirely. And come on, you think rads "deserves" 100K more a year because they have two more years of residency than internal medicine?

I wouldn't get all hung up on how much you deserve for specialty X over specialty Y. Relative salary by specialty can, has, and will change over the course of our careers (as will competitiveness), and it'll have nothing to do with how much a radiologist "deserves" to be paid but on extrinsic factors. Back in the 90's radiology went through a real rough patch - there were too many radiologists out there and salaries were getting hammered. Today rads is up, but anything can happen - especially in a specialty that could be largely outsourced to India just as fast as you can tweak a few laws. Not saying that's likely, just that it's better to define your expectations based on your own life, not on what other people are making.

If all doctors got 70% salary cuts I'd be on the lifestyle train heading to dermville.

If doctors got 70% salary cuts, it'd be a moot point. No one could afford to go to medical school. Well, you fortunate sons and daughters out there could, but not us regular folk. Then all the rich folk would pay an arm and a leg out of pocket to see a doctor without waiting 10 months, and all would be right in the universe again...

 

[Jwax]

I find those who find it so distasteful that some of us really would like to get paid well in our careers to be highly amusing...

I, too, want to help people, save lives, volunteer my time as a physician, do medical mission trips, yadda yadda. But in the end, I also want a pretty darn good salary so I can afford to do things like that, along with having a nice home, several vacations a year, give my eventual kid(s) whatever they need, and live a comfy lifestyle. You can't do that with $200K in debt and a $100K pre-tax salary. I think about $200K pre-tax is the minimum that would take care of my personal and professional goals. I guess more power to you if you can realistically achieve what you want out of life for less.

 

[WellWornLad]

I find those who find it so distasteful that some of us really would like to get paid well in our careers to be highly amusing...

Everyone wants to get paid well. There's nothing wrong with that.

Not everyone feels entitled to be paid well, however. When asking what one expects to be paid, you're asking what someone thought they would make when they got into medicine. When you ask what the minimum amount of money is that one would take and still be in medicine, you're asking for a low-ball estimate of what someone feels they deserve to be paid. There's a difference there, and the latter question is much harder to answer because "deserve" is such a subjective factor.

I'll take all the money you want to give me, sure. I won't even feel bad about it. I don't necessarily feel entitled to it, though. I feel entitled to make enough to pay back my loans. I feel entitled to make up for the opportunity cost of med school and residency. Beyond that, I don't feel like I am entitled to more money than in any other profession on an hour-to-hour basis. Of course, those other professions aren't paid by what they "deserve" either, so you can't take one job and crunch the numbers to see what it comes out to as a doctor's salary after med school/residency/hours worked a week. It's great that we (generally) come out ahead of the pack, and it'll be nice to live comfortably, but I won't attempt to justify the way things are on any pretense of deserving the money.

Of course, I'm using "deserve" in the Aristotelian, virtue-based ideal of reward whose objective form can only be approximated in this world. Others will take a more pragmatic/capitalist definition of "deserve," which is whatever you can legally get your hands on. That works too, except in that case you can't logically complain about what you make, you can only try and find a better job.

 

[BigRedBeta]

As someone else asked, what exactly are you asking?

I'm going into peds (and eventually critical care) and would probably be okay with a salary that allowed me to live comfortably and pay off my loans. That's because I know that I'm going to be happy because I'll be working with kids every day and doing what I want to do.

How much would you have to pay to be a radiologist? Probably well over a million per year, because I'd be absolutely miserable. The month I did on radiology back in September was one of the most awful months of my life. Thank god I was able to leave at noon every day, because I seriously spent all morning wanting to bang my head against the wall. I would make similar salary demands for a large number specialties, because they don't fit my personality and I know myself well enough to know what happens when I'm miserable.

If the question is about salary expectations, I know that the median salary for Pediatric intensivists is about $170k at the moment, so I'd say I'm aiming around that number. But getting to do what I want to do is more important than the number on my paycheck.

 

[bawer234]

Everyone wants to get paid well. There's nothing wrong with that.

You should talk to some of the "altruistic" med students at my school who think nothing of money and couldn't care less about it (yet).

I'll take all the money you want to give me, sure. I won't even feel bad about it. I don't necessarily feel entitled to it, though. I feel entitled to make enough to pay back my loans. I feel entitled to make up for the opportunity cost of med school and residency.

Amen.

 

[Blesbok]

Private practice radiology, with IR, brings in well over 600.

And you know this because of all the IR docs that you have discussed their salaries with, right?

 

[Jwax]

Everyone wants to get paid well. There's nothing wrong with that.

Not everyone feels entitled to be paid well, however. When asking what one expects to be paid, you're asking what someone thought they would make when they got into medicine. When you ask what the minimum amount of money is that one would take and still be in medicine, you're asking for a low-ball estimate of what someone feels they deserve to be paid. There's a difference there, and the latter question is much harder to answer because "deserve" is such a subjective factor.

Interesting explanation. I take the question to mean what it would take to be willing to go through all the draining effort of med school & residency & the mess that you have to deal with when you practice... I don't necessarily translate that to what I think I "deserve". For me, I find med school very difficult and so much more effort than anything else I've done in my life that I don't think I'd be willing to be in this effort if there wasn't a nice monetary perk at the end (along with all the other things I listed in my first post). When asked the question of "if you got paid a teacher's salary, would you still go into medicine?" The answer is a flat no. It takes a whole helluva lot less effort to become a teacher, though I wouldn't necessarily say that being a teacher is easier that being a doctor; it probably is if you love your job (summers off, need I say more), but any job sucks if you hate it. I hope to love my job as a doctor, but I wouldn't go there if the job didn't pay well.

 

[Blesbok]

If I didn't make at least $150-200k I probably wouldn't go into medicine. Not because I don't love medicine, but because I am sure I could find something else that I love without having to give up my 20s to studying and spending all night in the hospital just to have to pay back $150-200k in student loans.

I want to help people just as much as the next person, but I am not going to kill myself and sacrifice my life just for that reason. I happen to love my own life and my families lives more.

 

[Bombrainiac]

Every single one of your friends who went into business did it for the money. The reality is that there's no one on Wall Streeter who really wanted to help an old couple with their retirement plan. There are no real estate brokers who did it for the thrill of helping a young couple move into their first home. And there are very few lawyers left who will just waive their fee (or any percentage of it), because they feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Of course, I'm generalizing, but I'm not too far off from the truth.

You are the smartest of the smart, the hardest-working professionals out there. You provide a service to the community that is unmeasurable (all you have to do is listen to C-SPAN and witness the debauchery that makes up the "health outcomes" measures put forth by Congress). And, to generalize once again, YOU really did go into medicine to help others. Administrative costs of medicine (that means NOT YOU, the doctor) make up almost 1/3 of all the costs. You would be disgusted to learn what percentage of each health care dollar actually makes it into your pocket. And you are the one who is actually responsible for production in the health care industry. And you are the one who is sacrificing the most! The percentage return on investment for an MD is the worst when compared to a JD, or MBA. And this doesn't even account for opportunity cost, barriers to entry, and liability costs. And the KICKER to the whole compensation debate is that there ARE PEOPLE making money off of YOUR hard work, but they're not doctors or nurses (who get paid just fine, by the way) and they have big businesses whose sole purpose IS to profit off of healthcare.

You deserve to make money...and lots of it. And don't start comparing your salary to what doctors in other countries make--the ballgame is completely different in terms of length of training, access to and use of technology, severity of disease treated, work hours, AND LIABILITY (in England, for instance, patients have to fly to India to get their surgeries, because they are dieing on waiting lists). And there is a consisten influx of FMGs who practice here in the States, because this is the best place to be a doctor...and we should keep it that way.

The reality out there in the real world is not too harsh, but you MUST get informed about who is shaping your industry. The problem is that there are not enough doctors who are leading the path to healthcare reform, or getting politically involved. The ABA and the ATLA are giants and the AMA is no match for them, not to mention the insurance lobbyists. Medical students are opting for specialties that afford an easier lifestyle or good pay for the amount of work put in (i.e. dermatology, radiology), not because there has been a sudden explosion in interest in bullous impetigo. And, like it or not, the amount that you get paid is affecting patient care. You are human beings and deserve what is fair. The burden of the cost of your education has been put squarely on your shoulders. And the free market to make what you work for is being stripped away. And in the meantime, it is the patient's who suffer and we just blame it on "the system." You owe it to your patients to fight for yourselves.

Now, all that being said, good luck to seniors on match day next Thursday, and my best wishes to those unlucky ones who fell through the cracks on black Monday.

 

[Narmerguy]

All I want is hugs and tears.

From the car salesman, real estate agent, broker, etc...

So long as I can pay off the debt in a reasonable amount of time while supporting my family, I don't care how much I earn.

Really? You don't care?

 

[rachmoninov3]

Anything 150K to 250K...presuming that Obama's tax plan is still in place after I finish residency (around 2015)

It is nice to take a short day dream into the realm of what I'll be making in ten years questions, considering in residency I'll be making 5K to 10K less than I did as a CNA working through college!