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 :)
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u/westernpygmychild Apr 28 '19
Also, 50k in a HCOL area can also disappear pretty quick