Radiology satisfaction

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Taurus

Paul Revere of Medicine
20+ Year Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2004
Messages
3,220
Reaction score
671
I dug up this reference for my rad prof so I thought I would post it as well. 93% of rads are satisfied with their career. They're among the happiest and best-paid docs around.


Satisfaction of Radiologists in the United States: A Comparison between 2003 and 1995

Hanna M. Zafar, MD, MHS, Rebecca S. Lewis, MPH, and Jonathan H. Sunshine, PhD
1 From the Department of Radiology, Hospital of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa (H.M.Z.); Research Department, American College of Radiology, 1891 Preston White Dr, Reston, VA 20191 (R.S.L., J.H.S.); and Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University, New Haven, Conn (J.H.S.). Received June 16, 2006; revision requested August 21; revision received September 28; final version accepted November 9. Address correspondence to R.S.L. (e-mail: [email protected]).
Purpose: To prospectively ascertain what characteristics of radiologists, their practices, and their work environment affect professional satisfaction and to describe recent changes in satisfaction.
Materials and Methods: Survey respondents were guaranteed confidentiality. Those who consented to participate were informed of the nature of the study. The authors analyzed nonindividually identified data from the American College of Radiology 2003 Survey of Radiologists, a nationally representative, confidential, stratified random-sample mail survey of radiologists in the United States, which had a 63% response rate, with a total of 1924 responses. Data were weighted to be representative of all U.S. radiologists and were analyzed by using univariate and multivariate analyses. The five answer options to questions regarding level of satisfaction corresponded to scores of +2, +1, 0, –1, and –2. Results were compared with those of a similar 1995 survey.
Results: Although 93% of radiologists enjoyed radiology very much or somewhat, the mean satisfaction score for posttraining professionally active radiologists decreased from 1.62 in 1995 to 1.47 in 2003. Thirty-two percent of radiologists reported enjoying radiology more than 5 years ago; 41% said they enjoyed it less. Excessive workload reduced current satisfaction and satisfaction relative to 5 years ago. Working in the Midwest enhanced current satisfaction and satisfaction relative to 5 years ago. Practice type and practice ownership had more varied effects on professional satisfaction; subspecialty type had relatively little effect. In 2003, medicolegal climate, workload, and reimbursement and/or financial pressures were the three most common reasons for decreased satisfaction. In 1995, interference from managed care; government regulations, control, and red tape; and increased administrative burden were the three most common reasons. Lifestyle and/or work hours, and income were the most common causes of increased satisfaction in 2003, but these were also often mentioned as causes of decreased satisfaction.
Conclusion: Radiologists have higher levels of professional satisfaction than do other physicians; however, as with physicians overall, their satisfaction has decreased over time.
 
Which specialty do you think woman find sexiest?
Pediatric something or another...at least until they discover that general pediatrician is one of the worst medical fields to go into. Specialist, though, not so bad.
 
Another article on happiness by Dr. Sunshine!

That is the same author who
- in 1994 predicted a tremendous oversupply of radiologists for the year 2000
- when the opposite came true in 2001 predicted a tremdous shortage to last until 2015
- and with the currently softening job market will undoubtedly spell doom and gloom with another article in the ACR rag pretty soon.

Given his disastrous track record on the rads job market, I don't give his papers much attention.
 
That is the same author who
- in 1994 predicted a tremendous oversupply of radiologists for the year 2000
- when the opposite came true in 2001 predicted a tremdous shortage to last until 2015
- and with the currently softening job market will undoubtedly spell doom and gloom with another article in the ACR rag pretty soon.

Given his disastrous track record on the rads job market, I don't give his papers much attention.

What is your opinion of radiologist job satisfaction (in general and compared to other physicians) based on your experience throughout residency and beyond?
 
What is your opinion of radiologist job satisfaction (in general and compared to other physicians) based on your experience throughout residency and beyond?

Generally good, but certainly not the delusionally happy picture some people here try to paint.

  1. It is work, and particularly if you are a junior associate in a large group, it is HARD work. Don't kid yourself thinking that you will be lounging around on your Airon chair, read the occasional study and go home at 4 while pulling a substantial salary paid to you because you are so great.
  2. The more you read, the more mistakes you are going to make. 95/100 times those mistakes will be minor and won't affect patient care in a irreversible way. But if you are wrong, bad things can happen. The odds are probably not different for the FP or internist who sees 25 patients/day, but simply because you 'see' 100-150 patients/day, your mistakes in absolute numbers will start to add up faster (now if your are an ignorant uncaring jackass, you just deny that you made a mistake, shift the blame to someone further down the food-chain and move on, a successful coping mechanism that works until you get your butt sued). The responsibility that comes with having your hands in the care of so many patients can gnaw on some people.
  3. Reimbursements are going down, workloads are going up. Radiologist incomes have held steady due to improvements in productivity and reduction in the quality of service provided. If recent political developments like the deficit reduction act (DRA) are any sign, this trend won't reverse anytime soon.
  4. People burn out from the assembly line type work that particularly large practices create. If you are in a good market, you are often going to have a week off after 2 weeks of work or work a 4-day workweek only to make up for this, but still at the end of a 2 week stretch, possibly with 1-2 overnight calls thrown in, all x-rays start to look the same at some point.

That said. I love it. Given all the gigs in medicine, it is one of the best ones. The greatest advantage is the 'portability' of my work. Right now, I am sitting on a workstation in my basement where I can do 90% of the work I can do in the hospital (save mammo, save procedures). At the same time, my 2 year old is chasing his 'chu-chu-traaiin' in the background and if I want to have good homecooked food the fridge is just a floor away (and the exercise bike to pedal off the calories is right next to my desk 😉) . There are other good gigs in medicine (uro, ent, optho, derm), none of them allows you to do THAT.
 
radiology...the final frontier
 
f_w, thanks for the post describing the lifestyle of a radiologist. I am confused about the call. when you are talking about overnight call 1-2x every two weeks, what does that involve? Are you being called from home and you are supposed to run to the computer to read a study or are you in the hospital for the whole night and reading whatever the ER send you? How is the teleradiology service involved in all this? I am obviously ignorant to all this because I always thought that call meant to stay after everyone else go home until the nighthawk take over at 7-10 pm or whatever time. I didn't think it involves the whole night. It's good to know that the lifestyle is not all great like we all think. If you want to make some money, you really have to put in some long hours. I guess there is no such thing as a free lunch. I am deciding between radiology and medicine with a GI fellowship in the future. I guess if I am thinking that radiology will give me a much better lifestyle than GI, then I am obviously wrong?
 
f_w, thanks for the post describing the lifestyle of a radiologist. I am confused about the call. when you are talking about overnight call 1-2x every two weeks, what does that involve? Are you being called from home and you are supposed to run to the computer to read a study or are you in the hospital for the whole night and reading whatever the ER send you? How is the teleradiology service involved in all this? I am obviously ignorant to all this because I always thought that call meant to stay after everyone else go home until the nighthawk take over at 7-10 pm or whatever time. I didn't think it involves the whole night. It's good to know that the lifestyle is not all great like we all think. If you want to make some money, you really have to put in some long hours. I guess there is no such thing as a free lunch. I am deciding between radiology and medicine with a GI fellowship in the future. I guess if I am thinking that radiology will give me a much better lifestyle than GI, then I am obviously wrong?

I think that GI and Radiology are both good fields with decent lifestyles. When you start as a junior in GI you might do more call and emergencies like GI bleeds but when you're a senior that doesnt occur as often. Radiology, obviously, it's always considered one of the best lifestyle and money fields. The ROAD specialties as they say.
Dont be dissuaded from Radiology with ppl constantly talking about reimbursement cuts. There is not one field that does not get cut, and this is unpredictable most of the time. Even the mighty cardiologists had their diagnostic cath reimbursements get cut. However, speaking about money, both GI and Radiology rake it in, this is probably not going to change unless Hillary has her way. (And yes, you have to work for your money...imagine that).
One thing that GI can offer you that Radiology cant is the patient contact. Families will love you when you told them you successfully banded their father's varices. And you are considered a "real" doctor with all the "ooohs and ahhhhs" unlike radiology where most lay people dont know what the hell you're doing. I swear if i hear one more, "Aren't radiologists just those technicians??" GRRRR 😡
 
f_w, thanks for the post describing the lifestyle of a radiologist. I am confused about the call. when you are talking about overnight call 1-2x every two weeks, what does that involve?

Depends on your group. Many places these days will have an in-house person until 7, then the same person from home until midnight and telerad thereafter. If there is a procedure (fluoro guided LP, emergent dialysis cath) they get called in. Other groups just have someone in-house overnight (bigger hospitals or hospital systems with several ERs covered by telerad from a central location).

My situation is a bit different in that I am essentially a one-man shop. I am on 1:1. Typically I have telerad coverage after 11.

I guess there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The sooner your understand that, the happier you will be.

I am deciding between radiology and medicine with a GI fellowship in the future. I guess if I am thinking that radiology will give me a much better lifestyle than GI, then I am obviously wrong?

High variability in both. There are plum rads jobs with 9-5 work and little or no call and then there are GI gigs where you have a PA to take primary call and a referral base that doesn't abuse you. GI wouldn't do it for me, but I know a couple of GIs who are happy with what they do.
 
GI? Are you nuts?

There's a lot I'd do for money, but there's not enough money on the planet Earth for me to do GI. Why anyone would knowingly choose a 40 year career in which you have crap all over you all day long is friggin completely beyond me 😕??? Seriously all these losers can do to make money is stick their scopes where the sun don't shine and hope to pull out some gold... mostly what they get is the brown dirty stuff -- all over them... all day long... day after friggin day. Being a janitor is more respectable in my opinion. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke. Next time you hear of a GI guy that makes twice as much as all the others in the area, you can equate that to mean that that guy has twice as much crap on him all day long as the other guys! Is that something to be proud of???

Hey if you're some coprophila freak that's o.k. by me -- we all have our fetishes I guess -- but they make movies for that stuff. Use them. DON'T do GI.

peace
:laugh::laugh:
There really shouldnt be a consideration when thinking about these two fields now that you mention it.
 
well, I guess I can see why certain fields would be clearly desirable/undesirable to different people. I, on the other hand, can see the pros and cons in both. I was just looking for some last minute opinions since I am still deciding and the deadline to turn in the match list is coming up. I guess the ultimate decision is still up to me, even if that is being covered in crap for the rest of my life 🙂. We all have our reasons and motivations for doing things, it's all good.
 
The truth is that the lifestyle is the main thing that I care about, more than the money. I can find satisfaction in both GI and Rads in terms of what they do and will be happy regardless. I know that everyone say that rads have a much better lifestyle, but according to f_w (who seems to be the only person with private practice experience), that might not be the case and some rad in private practice seem like they work pretty damn hard, pretty much the same hours 50-60hrs/week as GI docs. The truth is that now I realized I should have done something else besides medicine if I wanted a good lifestyle. I think that when I am 40 years old, the main thing that I would want is to work a 9-5 job where I don't have to get up at night to go into the hospital and not go in on the weekend. I realized now that it is obviously unrealistic and I probably can't find a job in any field if that is what I am looking for since the partners probably won't like it if I don't work as much as them. If I know for sure that radiology can give me the lifestyle that I am looking for, I would pick it hands down. However, it seems like that is not the case, so that's why I am still deciding.
 
ApacheIndian plays little league. ApacheIndian likes little league.
 
I'm glad you stated this.

RADIOLOGY HANDS DOWN. The only way to make money in GI is to scope, and the amount you scope is inversely correlated with how good your lifestyle is. A "good lifestyle" GI guy will earn peanuts treating Crohn's and irritable bowel syndrome for the rest of his life.

FW and others like him have these egos they need to stroke by declaring how tough rads is and how much you have to read and blah blah blah -- please, spare me. None of the fields in medicine are that friggin hard... whether it's repeatedly looking at pictures till you recognize them in rads, algorithmically treating gomers in medicine, or doing the same boring procedures over and over like a trained monkey in the surgical fields -- c'mon people -- it ain't rocket science. Most of y'all are more than capable of doing a decent job in any one of a number of medical specialties. If you don't realize that medicine is not quite as mysterious as lay people think it is now, you will after you're out working for a few years.

The rads lifestyle is unbeatable -- sure there are some out there that bust their chops, but that's by choose b/c they wanna break 7 digits. If FW's working hard and not earning at the top end, then he's doing something wrong -- not an infrequent situation amongst rads who lack business sense. I can work 4 hours/day from home M-F and earn 250K. Show me ONE GI guy (or any other doc for that matter) that has that kind of flexible per hour earning power -- I challenge you. Choosing GI over rads for lifestyle reasons would be the stupidest decision you have ever made.

Do rads friend.

Hey Apache,

What do you think about pathology? I want to pit radiology against the leanest, meanest fields of pathology, the Kimbo Slice of all of pathology, Dermpath.

Radiology vs. Dermpath

I want to get LADoc on this from the path forum.
 
Hey Apache,

What do you think about pathology? I want to pit radiology against the leanest, meanest fields of pathology, the Kimbo Slice of all of pathology, Dermpath.

Radiology vs. Dermpath

I want to get LADoc on this from the path forum.

Then you have to compare the Kimbo Slice of radiology to Dermpath then. You can't compare the best of one field and not the other. And I don't know what the kimbo slice of radiology is.
 
In this discussion about GI, I'm suprised no one has mentioned virtual colonoscopy. It's just around the corner. Congress will approve it soon and the rad people are preparing for it. What happens to the income of GI once rads start to siphon off the virtual colonoscopy readings?

Being able to do work from home = priceless. You can work at the hospital during the day. Work for some domestic telerad company at night and weekends to pay for that new gf.
 
In this discussion about GI, I'm suprised no one has mentioned virtual colonoscopy. It's just around the corner. Congress will approve it soon and the rad people are preparing for it. What happens to the income of GI once rads start to siphon off the virtual colonoscopy readings?

Being able to do work from home = priceless. You can work at the hospital during the day. Work for some domestic telerad company at night and weekends to pay for that new gf.

I don't think that's what's going to happen.

Right now (at least in my neck of the woods) GI doctors are swamped with patients to scope. However, even then, the number of people who are being appropriately screened for colon cancer isn't 100%. In fact, it's poor:

"Medicare beneficiaries revealed that only 25 percent received recommended screenings for colorectal cancer since Medicare started to cover preventive screening tests. " That's per the American Cancer Society.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/article/cancer-deaths-far-americans-screened-colon-cancer_486059_1.html

And in addition to this there are PLENTY of people who need colonoscopies but refuse because they hate the intense prep and the thought of "something being up [their] butt".

Virtual Colonoscopy will allow the screening of a LOT of people who wouldn't have been screened otherwise. So that's work for radiologists. But there are going to be no shortage of people who results require a colonoscopy after their VC. GI will stay plenty busy with this, maybe more than they are now due to the increased volume.
 
The hope is that there will be more patients willing to undergo any type of colonoscopy screening.

Look at it this way. Right now, rads do 0% of the colonoscopies while GI, colorectal surgeons, etc do 100%. If many more patients are screened because of virtual colonoscopy, then the absolute number of colonoscopies that all groups do may increase (a rising tide afterall lifts all boats, right?), but rads may go from 0% to at least 50% or more of all colonoscopies. Maybe I should have phrased it as I think that rads will be the biggest beneficiary of this technology.
 
What happens to the income of GI once rads start to siphon off the virtual colonoscopy readings?

Not much. VC will expand the scope of colon cancer screening. VC has a fair number of false-positives. All these people now need 'diagnostic' colonoscopies which for the most part pay better than the screening studies.

When it was possible to get paid for VC, the smarter GIs set up cooperations with their rads department. Rads did a bunch of the VCs early in the morning, the ones that came up clear where sent home. The ones that had findings got tucked in in the GI lab for an afternoon colonoscopy. Everyone goes home happy 😀
 
I don't think that's what's going to happen.

Right now (at least in my neck of the woods) GI doctors are swamped with patients to scope. However, even then, the number of people who are being appropriately screened for colon cancer isn't 100%. In fact, it's poor:

"Medicare beneficiaries revealed that only 25 percent received recommended screenings for colorectal cancer since Medicare started to cover preventive screening tests. " That's per the American Cancer Society.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/article/cancer-deaths-far-americans-screened-colon-cancer_486059_1.html

And in addition to this there are PLENTY of people who need colonoscopies but refuse because they hate the intense prep and the thought of "something being up [their] butt".

Virtual Colonoscopy will allow the screening of a LOT of people who wouldn't have been screened otherwise. So that's work for radiologists. But there are going to be no shortage of people who results require a colonoscopy after their VC. GI will stay plenty busy with this, maybe more than they are now due to the increased volume.

Agree that the volume is likely going to be the same for GI, however, check out the thread in the GI forum. VC should be the LEAST of their worries. Looks like their reimbursements for scopes in ASC is going to decrease by 35% according to their discussion (one of the posts by gida).

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=462555

Yikes! Sounds like a bull**** move from insurance companies again. Hopefully this won't come to fruition.
 
I don't GI will be alone. I think heart stenting will be like cataract surgery is today -- poorly reimbursed.

Even if rads get cuts, you don't have to deal patients and you get to enjoy your cup of mocha, hopefully while you're still at home.
 
I'm suprised no one has mentioned virtual colonoscopy. It's just around the corner. Congress will approve it soon and the rad people are preparing for it.

Congress doesn't approve medical procedures.
 
No free lunch. Reimbursement cuts across every field including radiology coming down the pike. It is just a matter of how deep and how quickly. Work harder and smarter. At some point we will reach our limits for hours and efficency, that's when things turn from bad to ugly. Hope you like the radiology treadmill.
 
Congress doesnt approve procedures, period. If they pressure CMS to reimburse something still negates the point. CMS can reimburse me for throwing my trash away but that still doesn't make it a medical procedure. The medical community will determine which procedures fulfill the standard of care, not the laymen who decide what will or will not be reimbursed.

Congress can pressure CMS to do so, either directly or through legislation.

American Cancer Society recognizes virtual colonoscopy screening benefit

Now that ACS is on board, it's just a matter of time before VC is a recognized and reimbursed procedure.
 
Congress doesnt approve procedures, period. If they pressure CMS to reimburse something still negates the point. CMS can reimburse me for throwing my trash away but that still doesn't make it a medical procedure. The medical community will determine which procedures fulfill the standard of care, not the laymen who decide what will or will not be reimbursed.

Acts of congress made:
- screening pap-smears reimbursable
- screening mammography reimbursable
- screening PSAs and DREs reimbursable
- cuts in reimbursement for certain imaging procedures outside of the RUC and SGR mechanisms.

Payment drives medical practice, your argument comes down to semantics.
 
I've been around, and I hope you're doing well!
 
Top