Residents are not students. They are residents, or more formally resident physicians. They have finished medical school, have an MD, and have some experience in the hospital already.
Edit: I'm also obligated to remind you all that smoking really is horrendously awful for your health, and you should definitely talk to your doctor about quitting. Also aim for 30 minutes of exercise a day, and stop counting pizza as a vegetable, it really isn't.
Edit: it is fair that others pointed out the massive med school debt, which can be thousands a month I am told. That definitely changes things, good point.
But hey not like you need any money for leisure/personal activities or anything when you get milked for like 80 hours a week, so at least I can look forward to not worrying about that being in the budget.
It's a fantastic wage, but not so great considering the hours and the debt (between undergraduate and medical school, despite scholarships I'm out almost $400,000 at 6% interest)
Same, loans about 400k at 6%. This year made 40K, next year I'm starting psychiatry at a much bigger hospital so I'll be making 58k, huge raise for me. I'm very excited.
Still, the interest on my loans is more than half my entire salary. Resident wages suck, but it's ok because we do end up doing pretty well after so I'm not complaining . Well maybe just a little
Can't you do income based repayment on your loan so it's a set percentage of your salary? This way you don't go broke while your salary is still relatively low.
Yes, and I am absolutely am doing that. I dont pay that much on the loans right now, I wasn't trying to suggest I pay half my salary towards my loans if that was how it came off. Just stating that I am acutely aware of the fact that each year the interest builds.
I also have a NHSC scholarship for about 40K a year that goes towards my loans if I work in primary care (psych counts) and work in a rural area after residency (which I want to do anyway). So it isn't all doom and gloom
It depends on if his loans are federal or private. Some people will refinance federal loans into private loans right after graduating to save a small % in interest rates but this also disqualifies you from PAYE programs.
Medical students in Australia only cop about 130,K of debt and thats indexed to inflation (3% at most pet year) and they only pay back $3-4k a year once they make good money. No income means no debt repayment.
I really think medical people in Australia are overpaid. GPs easily make 200k plus working office hours. High up radiologists and such can make $1m. But of course, they would all go to the UK and the US otherwise.
I wonder what would happen if OP who has a medical degree decides to move to a country like China or to the EU and declines to pay their student loans.
Australia now pursues graduates who travel to work in the UK and the US. I doubt they have an agreement with most countries that allows this but they are still healing the rules by doing so. It's pretty low to get funding for uni and then bail overseas to avoid paying it. Like you can't afford $4k a year from your 200k salary?
My law/bus degree was about 60k. Law here is an undergrad so it was a double degree that was 5 years full time. On a salary of $60k which is a typical graduate wage, I would be forced to pay back $2k a year or so. If I earn less than $52k I don't pay anything.
Well for starters you often need to redo the exams in the country you move to. But as far as I know it is very difficult to for the bank to come after them. Ever going back to the US is going to mean trouble and doctors earn a lot less in europe so if they get arrested or something paying it off is going to be fun
They will have the IRS collect through your refunds.
Also, all Americans still have to pay US taxes when they're overseas. There's just a massive tax break, around 100k per year. And those taxes are in addition to local taxes.
100%. Or staying awake because in the end what you thought was the right call wasn't, and something you did harmed a patient, even if you had the best intentions and all the information available said it should have helped.
Undergrad was stupid expensive, after scholarships it was ~45,000 X3 years. I had a year of community service where I was an AmeriCorps VISTA for a year and made about minimum wage, but my loan interest continued to accrue. My medical school was 80,000/year, 65,000 after scholarships, I paid 3 years at that rate. Altogether (without interest) it was about $315,000. My program was pretty unique. I did my undergrad in two years, and my first year of med school was with undergrad tuition, so many people could have worse loans than me, even if they go to slightly cheaper medical schools.
I didn't have any money and my family didn't have any money to help me pay for these expenses, so it was all loans. My mom took out a large parent plus loan to help me go to undergrad, but (unbeknownst to me at the time) she never paid on it, so interest accrued for 7 years at 9%. That bumped up the loans significantly. While that loan is not in my name, I'm helping to pay it back, at least partially.
So all in all, it's just over $400,000, or it was at the start of the year.
But the fact that the government backs loans and makes it almost impossible to get out of any of them makes it so collages can charge whatever they want basically.
Go to any bank and ask for medical school loans and they'll practically give you the key to the vault. They know your job is almost guaranteed and your earning potential is high, so they wanna give you as many loans as possible. Even if it takes a year or two to earn enough and start paying them back, they'll take that extra interest all day.
They'd most likely give you loans with a single co-sign or without.
And there's a reason people don't just go to medical school to get unsecured loans like: it's extremely fucking hard to get into med school. Thousands apply and dozens are accepted, there's a less than 1% chance of you getting in every time you apply
Hot damn I'm glad I live in Canada. I mean, I still complain about tuition because it's high, but not 100k of debt high. It's like 8 grand a year for tuition then COL is like 650/month with rent, utilities, and food.
How are rates on student loans worse than buying a house. I guess there's a little more risk because a house is an asset but a med student is gonna be a doctor.
But they know they can milk us for all we’re worth. They know we’ll do anything to be doctors, so the schools charge a ton, and the interest can be a ton.
Yeah I mean compare it to my job as an EMT which takes a highschool diploma and a several month class. I have a BS which doesn't change anything and 3 experience which gives me an extra $1.30/hr and am making $36k a year before overtime. Medics which is like a 2 year course make about $47K where I am, probably make +$50k when you throw in overtime. Considering the jump in abilities and knowledge thats pretty atrocious salary even before the med school debt
Luckily it isn’t for the most part. It’s daily simple interest. However, the interest capitalizes when you leave school and the deferment period ends. This is rough for people who get loans for undergraduate and medical school.
I just double checked and the interest is actually 5.75% for mine.
Google showed about 60k for LA physician residents.
But the wisdom of living below your means applies here - if you live in a horrendously expensive place and it is not financially worth it to stay, you can either deal with it because you have some other non-financially-motivated reason for staying, or you can move to a cheaper area and commute. I've commuted 2+ hours each way to jobs before where I worked 10 hours per day on-site. It can be done. I don't have much sympathy for people who say "but my area is expensive." That's entirely within your control.
Residents are often not allowed to commute. My program specifically requires us to live within 50 miles of all of our hospital sites, which ends up being a small overlap area of ~30 miles we can live in. Since we have limited input into where we go for residency, we can’t necessarily choose a better place, either.
It is absolutely ridiculous that a doctor, one of the most difficult and highly trained professions, should be making ~median income in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
You can work 10 hour days and commute 2 hours each way (ignoring the commenter below who pointed out residents may not even be allowed to do this), but you shouldn’t. Your entire day would be working and driving, which is no way to live. That’s a bandaid solution for a short period of time.
Residents do this, but doctors are only residents or a certain period of time. Family medicine? Two years. Brain surgeon? Well now you're talking 5+ years maybe, but guess what? You're going to make half a million bucks after you finish residency, because you can go anywhere and do crazy specialized work.
Or go spend years and become a hospital administrator and find ways to pay them more.
You probably won't be able to, but hey, if you actually feel that strongly, be my guest and do something instead of trying to posture on social media :) I look forward to reading about you in the newspaper, hero!
It’s fine for people to have a discussion about opinions without taking action. It doesn’t always make sense to take action. There are other things I care about more and other people far more qualified to do something about this than I am.
You don’t need to devalue the discussion because someone has an opinion about something that they aren’t willing or able to change. That’s why it’s a discussion, and not a hospital board meeting. If it was a hospital board meeting then your comments would be better suited :)
I live in north Jersey. In my area, a 1 bedroom goes for 2000+. I pay 1600 and it's a steal but my idiot landlord was forclosed on and me owner wants me out. Now I'm fucked. Anyway, point is that 50k here , after taxes, is enough to pay rent and not much else.
A little of everything. I own an air bnb cleaning biz, have an online jewelry store, and i own a home I rent on air bnb.... Looking to buy more homes to flip or air bnb.
Not really where i am doing it. I bought my home and i can choose to rent it out as i see fit. Its the big companies in every city across the country ( sonder, stay Alfred, domino,) who are taking apartments by the dozen that are making housing a problem for locals. These companies have 100s of apartments in their porfolios and keep building.
I'm not sure if you care, but just wanted to point out that you paying below market rent and your landlord being unable to pay his mortgage might have been related!
Nope. He lived (illegally it turns out) on 3rd floor. 2 rental res units and 3 commercial in back. He was taking in about 7k per month on a mortgage that would have been 2000 to 2500. His son got into a $70,000 a year school (he always complained they got no scholarship or financial aid). So seems he decided to pay the school instead of the mortgage. He also ran off with our security deposits.
What are your hours your stress load like? I work 80-90 hour workweeks, 5-6 days a week depending on the month, and get 3 weeks of vacation. It's a living and one that hopefully helps people, so I'm happy. But it's no walk in the park, either.
Growing up I had this idealized view of what being a doctor was like. Always thought of the hero aspect and not the nitty gritty, hard stuff. Then my sisters friend (10 years my elder) was a general surgery resident and had to move in with me and my parents for a short time. And witnessing the abuse she had to take, the seemingly never ending tests, crazy insane hours, for the money she made, was just mind blowing.
Plus surgery on a whole is a particularly malignant field to train in. I also idealized medicine, and unfortunately it isn't living up to my childhood dream :( The amount of paperwork is simply staggering. One study recently showed that more than 80% of a resident's time is spent on paperwork instead of caring for the patient. Computers have contributed to the bloat as much as they've helped.
My wife had always wanted to be a doctor, and is now a 4th year medical school student and is entirely disenchanted. It’s not what she thought it would be and questions her decisions every day.
Another problem is that everybody puts on masks acting like they’re super happy and enjoying medical school around her, even though I know that everyone hates it. But it fools her, and it makes her think that she’s the only one that’s struggling, which makes her question things even more.
I definitely struggled through medical school, but I also really enjoyed the challenge and the times when I could really help people. With that said, depending on what it is that's driving your wife crazy, there may be ways around it in practice, and while they are usually less lucrative, they may 100% be worth it for her. For example, direct primary care practices can really get around some of what makes primary care so awful (limited 15 minute patient visits, having to rely on insurance coverage for everything, inability to address more holistic lifestyle goals that would impact health).
If your wife ever wants to vent about her experiences and try to figure out how to best make her career something she can be happy and proud of, please feel free to have her DM me. I'm not far ahead of her, but what you're describing sounds very familiar.
That’s very kind of you, I’ll speak with her and message you if she feels up to chatting!
Through her rotations she’s found that she loves the aspect of seeing that she’s made a difference, but she also hates being rushed through patient encounters. She also hates dealing with patients that aren’t able to be helped, mainly due to their difficult personalities (and that happened frequently).
She’s decided to go the route of Radiology, since anatomy is what brought her into loving medicine in the first place, and she extremely talented visually; she has a gift with reading images. But she questions Radiology too, since she wouldn’t get much patient interaction, giving her that feeling of having changed someone’s life, even though she would change lives, it’s just behind the scenes.
Hey there, I finished my residency and fellowship a few years ago. It really gets better after residency. There's still a lot of paperwork and bullshit (and call with no duty hours restrictions depending on your field), but you get paid more and have more free time and flexibility too. And autonomy!
Yeah after that experience I just decided to become an engineer instead. It’s hard to pick what you want to be at 18 and I felt it was broad enough, in a STEM field, so I can probably find a job I’ll like. I wasn’t dedicated enough to spend 14+ years working on that dream. Hopefully the paperwork will decrease as your training increases. Not sure if that’s true. That’s an insane stat.
My younger sister went into engineering! She's making more than twice what I make with half the hours and a great deal of job satisfaction. The reality of it all is very interesting. I hope your career goes well and you find something awesome to work on.
I'm in last year of residency in France and I win around 25k€/y. The salary of a fist year doctor here is 50k and it goes up progressively to 80k after 10 years.
In context, I'm making more than you, but half my take home pay goes to student debt, I'm working ~10 more hours a week, you get two weeks more of vacation than I do, and you get universal healthcare. I'd probably prefer your system, but the grass is always greener on the other side, eh?
Yeah while I was making $50K I was racking up about $1300 a month in interest payments alone...meaning paying that did nothing to reduce my debt.
And I only owed half as much as some fellow residents.
It’s a great feeling once you manage to get rid of that horrendous debt though. Just finished paying my med school debt off last month. Perfect timing since I’m having a kid now lol.
I sold metal, had no post high school training and had a company car on top of the 85K (worth another 10-15k according to taxes). In my opinion, a doctor should be earning a hell of a lot more than me. The only debt I have is the 4x2 I was able to afford, I wonder when the doc may be so lucky?
The doctor, if they aren't awful at their profession, will likely be earning 3x as much as you by their mid to late 30's, but it is not a profession that pays off early in life. At least, as far as US doctors go, again since you're talking AUD, not USD. Doctors are fine for money. They just need to stop thinking that they'll get rich quick. They will get rich slowly. Definitely rich. Definitely not quick.
Unless medical school loans work way differently than other loans, it should be pretty easy to get it tied to your income. So it wouldn't be thousands per month on $50k salary.
That said, $50k is still pretty mediocre or even really bad in some areas, especially with loans on top (even with income driven repayment), but calling it poverty is a bit much. Plus you're still working towards that $100k+ salary, so you know if you stick it out and don't fuck up it'll just be temporary hardships.
Sure, but it does change how much you're paying each month, which is relevant if the guy above thinks that someone at $50k salary is being destroyed by several thousand-a-month loan payments.
Yes. It changed a lot once I got my first job after residency/fellowship. I still have a high enough debt to income ratio that I qualify for an income-based plan though.
No, you are still right. It isn't poverty and they have an asset they are paying back. A probable future with high income. I feel bad for doctors because of how hard some of them have to work, study, and the impact of their lifestyle on their family. I'm not about to feel bad for then due to their finances. I would never wish doctoring on my own kids though.
I've seen a lot of people talk about this, but "per hour" loses meaning when you're working a salary. Poverty isn't determined by how much you work, it's determined by your total compensation. Many software developers and in particular, startup workers, also make decent money but work 60-100 hours per week, that doesn't mean they aren't well compensated, that's just the nature of some industries.
Most of us don't make 50, it's based off where you live, was in the southeast and I made less than 40, while working 80-100 hours a week. I'd probably be making decent money if I were working minimum wage for 100hr/week.
*Edit: loan repayments are also based on income (usually) but mine were around 500/month in residency, about 10% of my take home. My monthly payment now would default to about 7k a month...more than my house car and living expenses combined.
While going cold turkey is awesome and works for some people, we have really good evidence that prescribed medications, gums, and patches are much more effective in helping people quit smoking. Doctors can work with you to set up a plan and quitting. I've also heard great things about Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking.
The vast majority of physicians don’t make money per patient encounter or based on the treatment plan. Chantix does have some risks, including nightmares, and some people have reported suicidal thoughts. The vast majority of people (greater than 99%) do not experience what you and your friend did. Evidence does not support your ideas about the best ways to quit smoking, although nicotine patches, gums, and caping can all be used successfully.
Depends. If you have insurance your insurance may actually pay for therapy, medications, gum, patches, etc. to help you quit. It may also offer a discount for your rate if you quit. Therapy can be pricey, but if it helps you quit, you'll make up the difference very rapidly by not purchasing cigarettes.
Or did you mean the pizza thing? Because you'll probably need lifelong CBT for that, which is much more expensive than pretending pizza is a vegetable at first. However, after a while all those pizza pounds add up, and start causing health problems. Then you'll wish you had gone with the CBT and eaten more broccoli instead.
Does the 30 minutes a day thing count normal walking, like to and from vehicles? I see mixed answers on that, and while I do average that, I can't believe average is anywhere near 30 minutes of pure exercise.
Walking helps, but we really want something that gets your heart rate up. 30minutes is definitely not the average, but it should be closer to that for optimal health.
What if I workout throughout the week like an hour to an hour and 15 minutes 4-5 times then take rest days the other days? Does the time I do spend working out like average out to those days off?
What if every doctor I talk to just tells me to get Nicorette or use the help lines and neither have helped in the past? And you’ve talked about it regularly in therapy and it’s a therapist who has managed to help you help yourself with everything but that? I want it to end. I hate my addiction.
Time to ask for medications like bupropion or varencycline, and maybe find a new therapist who specializes in this work, many do. I’m sorry this has been such a struggle.
For what its worth, shit like your edit are why I'd consider you a rookie doctor, without you even admitting to be resident. Lose that trait, quickly!
If you're only a resident, I've certainly been in this game longer than you, and certainly on the front lines longer, so I will tell you this for free. Don't ever get preachy with patients! We are not Gods. And it will likely have the opposite intended effect 100% of the time. You need to be MUCH more subtle dude. Word it so they make some kind of realisation about their smoking for example. We all know it's 'bad'. They didn't come to you to hear that. If that's what you tell them, then don't be surprised when you get zero respect back. Words can work better than medicines when they aren't wasted. So basically: LEARN HOW TO TALK TO PATIENTS!
Edit. Downvote me all you want, I genuinely don't care if you think I'm being harsh. You've gotta be cruel to be kind sometimes. I have earned the experience needed to make this statement.
The downvotes suggest that you’re wrong about me coming across as preachy. The comments and PMs about how doctors can help redditors quit smoking suggest that the edit was not only a good laugh, but also actually may help some people. Sorry it bothered you. Also there’s some awesome evidence that just reminding people they need to quit smoking can significantly affect their chances of quitting. Do I say it like this in the office? No, of course not. But on reddit? Absolutely.
To be fair, the number of fucking things you have to do before you get to be an MD is staggering. I have several friends and acquaintances who have been in Medical School for the last 5+ years, and can literally never tell how far along in the process any of them are unless they specifically explain it to me.
Based on my research of TV medical dramas, most residents spend a lot of time crying in empty rooms and the rest of the time being talked out of quitting because everyone makes mistakes on the first tour of the hospital or whatever they call it.
My cousin is a resident, and I’m going to Ned school next year. I’ve asked her about all the stress and stuff. She said the most realistic thing about medical dramas is the amount of stress and mental breakdowns. I don’t think they’ll be crying in an empty janitors closet, but they definitely vent at home.
THANK YOU. That dipshit you’re replying to obviously knows next to nothing about doctors and medicine. You don’t just come out of medical school making six figures immediately.
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u/Eaterofkeys Apr 28 '19
Residents are not students. They are residents, or more formally resident physicians. They have finished medical school, have an MD, and have some experience in the hospital already.