Oh, man. When I first started, ~20 years ago, I felt like I might be overpaid too. Bit of imposter syndrome. Then I spent some time doing the job, realizing what other docs made, realizing what the malpractice rate was, realizing I couldn’t make one single error or missed lab in a 10-12 hour shift, realizing if I made one smalI mistake someone might die, realizing 4 traumas might come in for me to manage at once. Then I realized I might actually get an appropriate salary. Was a great company, said their lower pay was accounted for by being “family friendly” and actually including voting and input from all docs.
Then, my company sold out to a hedge fund, cut the pay, slashed 401k, many other cuts, and the (admittedly charismatic) founder tried to convince all the docs it was for the best that hedge funders now took half of our profits.
Times have changed. Now my company is having APP’s staff free standings without docs; do all advanced procedures without docs (central lines, intubations, etc); and push for a 1:4 doc:app ratio in all busy ED’s. They have an “Academy” that teaches app’s all these advanced procedures. The only patients that docs are required to staff with APP’s are ESI 1, basically codes. Salaries haven’t changes in years. The “vested portion” of the company from docs is down 75% of what the CEO said it would be worth.
If you’re making 100k per year, and the hedge funder is making 400k off the work and risk that you’re taking, that‘s not fair.
I still remember in med school, one honest professor told us that “You’ll think things are great now! But that‘s only because you didn’t know how good it was before you started.”
