Academic Surgeons???? Pay???

[canadian]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone is/is interested in being an academc surgeon. Is it difficult to land a junior faculty position straight out of general surgery residency? Do people usually do fellowships?

I heard somewhere that a junior faculty (Ass. Prof. in a medical subspecialty) in a university setting makes around $90,000. Is this true for surgery? Or does it depend on how much time a person devotes to research? $90,000 is well below the average salary of a surgeon. Do academic surgeons have to sacrifice income for prestige/ability to do research?

Thanks

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[neo]

there is definitely a paycut in academic medicine. it's a pretty significant paycut. i dont know what general surgery attendings get paid but i do know that for ENT and urology, academic posts start at 160K a year. That is quite a bit less than the average 250K that those subspecialties make outside of academia. the current structure of grants now makes it so that doing research is financially attractive to program chairs so now, it is actually better to do alot of research IF you can get a RO1. this used to not be the case and could change in the future.

 

[mcwmark]

I would say if an associate professor is "making" $90,000, that is just the salaried portion that the school is compensating him/her for time spent away from clinical duties. They then supplement their income with their clinic/surgery schedule 2-3 days a week. That is the situation with many of the physicians I have talked with that "make" $90,000.

There is hard data on academic salaries out there--the AAMC puts together a survey on academic salaries by specialty and region. If I remember correctly, the average salary for associate/assistant/full professor/chairman was something like:
$180/220/260/370. For other surgical specialties, like CT, the AVERAGE chair salary was in the 600-700k range.

Look for it in your library.