This^^^^^. Having a union would be a great perk, but, at the end of the day, how many residents actually place pay, benefits or working conditions above connections, prestige and quality of training when choosing a residency?
This attitude is how the culture of abuse, low pay, and extremely harsh working conditions is perpetuated.
Yea I’m definitely not interested in being overworked in residency if I don’t have to be. The unions are definitely interesting. I feel like even while in training we’re still educated individuals that deserve good pay and a better work/life balance. I could see putting up with terrible conditions if it were only a year but some residencies are like 7 years. Just seems entirely too long to be miserable after dedicating so much time to education. At some point lifestyle, pay, and family outlook needs to improve and I don’t think that should start once you finally become an attending when you’re well into your late 30s, or even 40s for some people.
You are, of course, correct, but like med school admissions itself, the supply/demand imbalance between those seeking the training and the available spots allows it to continue. My deciding not to tolerate it is not going to change anything, and collectively, there are simply too many people chasing too few opportunities for any one person's attitude to have an impact.
Really? Google Apple and Amazon and Starbucks and unions. They are making a comeback.
I could see them having some bargaining power. I find it hard to believe that a program would be willing to let go of all their current residents who unionize. That would cause problems for the hospital and program I would think.
Plus, it would be illegal!
Exactly right, and this is a society-wide problem. The root of much of our dysfunction.
meridian.allenpress.com
Is there an easy way to find out which programs are unionized? Seems like a very awkward question to ask during interviews.There have literally been studies looking at the cost to replace all residents in health systems with APPs or attending physicians. Our power is the fact that we are low cost, subsidized doctors who cover the majority of work force hours in a hospital. I will say I was ambivalent about our union, but they have provided better salary increases, parking, health care, guaranteed vacation etc. For those going into 4-6 year programs, I think a union is very beneficial and something you should consider.
Eliminating Residents Increases the Cost of Care
ABSTRACTBackground . Academic health centers are facing a potential reduction in Medicare financing for graduate medical education (GME). Both the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Deficit Commission) have suggested cutting...
There are spreadsheets every year that have info on programs. I don't think it's in any of them now, or at least not in the specialties I am interested in because it is not super wide spread. That being said if people really start doing this over the next few years it might be included when you're applying.
Depends on the field you are in. If you are going radiology and your program doesnt offer moonlighting for example, then you are going to the bottom of the list.
Could be worse. California is just as expensive and restricts moonlighting.
It’s not always about a massive pay increase, for instance inflation is 8% and our program was only set to increase salaries by 2%. Effectively a pay cut. Our union renegotiated our salary to match inflation. There was never the expectation that we get paid extravagantly, just fairly.
That makes sense, good on you guys
Where can the spreadsheets be found?
LA County residents (at Harbor UCLA and LAC + USC) just got a pretty big win with a large jump in salary, housing benefits through their union bargaining. It took a strike threat to make it happen - they had voted to authorize a strike and set a date before the county caved.
We had contemplated striking if negotiations broke down and there were lots of talk about public perception. There was a committee developed to figure out the PR message.
I think the last real cir/seiu strike was in the 90s, so I wouldn’t say real strikes are likely to become commonplace. But i imagine threats of strikes for residents who provide much of the labor to keep a hospital running are probably more effective than the actual strike itself. That part is a last resort. LA county desperately needed change - the wages were becoming practically unliveable compared to other nearby programs, and definitely hurting recruitment.
I hear you, and agree that benefits or working conditions do not need to suck in order for the quality of training to be good. OTOH, you are the exception, rather than the rule, in placing working conditions over prestige, or quality of training.
NYC is the draw not the institutions there necessarily. You don’t need to go to MSKCC or Columbia to learn to be a good internist or surgeon. The abysmal working conditions there are not a fair trade off for the 💩 show of trainee treatment that occurs there, though I understand that people have really dug their heals into that philosophy.
I think one of the challenges of the union is that the residents are not a single monolithic group. What is important to the path resident will be different from the rads resident will be different from the surgical resident. And each of those departments may have different perks to the residency that will likely be wiped out as everything becomes more uniform.
