Salary, Fellowship, and General Residency Issues

[DO for ophtho]

I was wondering if any of you out there have any thoughts on the salary involved in pursuing a general psych residency and what the difference may be for a general psychiatrist vs. a child/adolescent psychiatrist? One of the senior residents I talked with at interviews signed a deal for over 200K guaranteed his first 2 years of practice in addition to having 100K of his medical school loans paid for. I gather this is not the norm, but was wondering how rare such opportunities are.

My second question has to do with the importance of where I do residency. I selected a residency that was close to my family, and probably does not carry a ton of name recognition. Is this going to be problematic should I decide to pursue a child psych fellowship outside of my residency program? Is it going to affect how competitive I am for future employment or is the need for psychiatrists so great, it should not be a big deal?

Finally, I was wondering if any of you know of any issues that we should be aware of as we start our psych residencies? Things that we should look out for or check into at this stage, or maybe common mistakes or pitfalls new residents fall into.

I appreciate any input you all have.

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[mdblue]

1. There was another thread here somewhere discussing the same thing-anyway, if it sounds to good to be true, probably it is. When they pay u 200k for being a child psych-there is a catch somewhere(acute in-pt coverage, frequent on-call, 15 min med-checks, not-so-enviable location etc). Anyway, the $ is in going into private practice and that only u can decide whether it's appropriate for u. Definitely, it's not for everyone.
2. If u r interested in academic med, go for the prestigious prog, otherwise, forget the name and u can go anywhere u like.
3.Prepare to face and accept u'r limitations as a physician. All forms of talk-tx works but probably u'll end up doing 15-min med cks for the majority of u'r time. Lifestyle is OK but u'r colleagues will sometime forget that u r a doctor. Majority of the pts can't differentiate between a psychiatrist and psychologist. And importantly psych patients who are really sick, can't work/earn and be prepared to see these people w/o any hope of reimbursement(the # is mounting up these days).
Hope this helps.