There are many datasets for salaries. Only a select few are listed above. I’ve seen many that still have us averaging FT $200K. The ranges are all over the place. Psychiatry salaries are extremely wide and averages are mostly worthless numbers as they can’t normalize everything we do. There are also many factors that influence numbers. If the requests for salary figures focused on academia and public health type jobs, you could easily find our average being $220K. I met someone that is working FT in psych for $160K still. This person doesn’t “need” more money and so hasn’t asked for more.
If the poll focused only on private practice psych, what all can be included and what is 1 FTE?
Let’s take me. I own a couple clinics that include hiring other clinical staff. I get a salary and distributions that all hits my taxes. Does the poll tell me to exclude distributions and account for how I decide what % is distributions? No. I also hold other PT jobs. Those PT jobs are performed when I have no-shows. It isn’t extra hours added on at the end of the day. How is that accounted for in deciding my FTE? Do I get to combine income from patients that show, no-show fee, other staff, and PT gig income in an hourly rate? If you ask me to include/exclude some of those numbers via different formulas, I guarantee you that I’m just guessing for any salary poll.
I’ve also met psychiatrists that hold 2 FT salary jobs and complete both between the hours of 8-5. They are high efficiency people. Let’s not debate the quality here as it isn’t the purpose of the post. How are we accounting for this? Some include call bonuses and other things that add extra hours and waking up at night.
How are they asking these salary questions? How are they verifying numbers? Usually they don’t verify anything. It becomes a random stab in the dark. Some fear it isn’t randomized, so they report higher to not make themselves appear too low.
Our specialty is in a unique position. The variety of positions, extra income, volume, call, etc is very high. Unless you can specify all of the requests of a particular job, I’d argue that an accurate average salary for psych is a range of $200k-$600K depending on what you are being asked to do. Anything more focused is worthless details.
