People,
I can't believe that some medical students and residents do not understand the simplest economics and vocally **support** the exploitation of resident/intern labor market. Just consider the following comparisons for a little perspective on this matter and ask yourself, "how much am I worth?":
The starting salary for a junior associate at a law firm versus the starting salary of an intern...
The starting salary for a newly minted MBA at a fortune 500 company versus the starting salary of an intern...
The starting salary for a computer scientist (master's level) at a solid dot com company versus an intern...
Compare the levels of training, the intensity of training, the professional responsibility, and costs of obtaining the relevent education and ask yourself if **you** as an intern are being paid what you're worth? Consider the debt that physicians incur and the day-to-day stress and responsibility of making life or death decisions and ask yourself if you're being paid what you're worth?
It is a fact that medicine has one of the lowest rates of returns on professional education, while lawyers have rates of returns almost twice that of physicians! (see reference below)
Is it any wonder why lawyers are running the country? Based upon the lackluster response to this issue by those with a vested interest in fairer working conditions for intern/resident physicians, it is obvious that the reason why physicians get taken advantage by the lawyers, MBA's, HMO's, PAs/NPs/CRNAs etc daily is because physicians just don't know how to give a **** about their own common good. Read these words slowly and **THINK** about what they mean: "Students can still anticipate relatively poorer returns on their educational investment when they choose a career in primary care medicine as compared with careers in procedure-based medicine or surgical specialties, business, law, or dentistry."
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Revisiting a Comparison of Educational Costs and Incomes of Physicians and Other Professionals
Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Weeks, VAMC (11Q), WRJ, VT 05009; telephone: (802) 291-6285; e-mail: <
[email protected] >.
The authors previously compared the 1990 educational costs and incomes of physicians and other professional groups. Since then, there have been dramatic changes in the market for the groups examined. This article reports their update of the previous analysis, using 1997 data. For this update, the authors applied standard financial techniques to expected incomes and educational costs to determine the return on educational investment over the working lifetime for five professional groups: primary care physicians, procedure-based physicians, dentists, attorneys, and graduates of the top 20 business schools.
The hours-adjusted net present values of the educational investments for attorneys ($10.73) and procedure-based physicians ($10.40) are considerably higher than those for dentists ($8.90) and businessmen ($8.27); the return for primary care physicians ($5.97) remains much lower than all others. Primary care physicians have an hours-adjusted internal rate of return on their educational investment equal to 16%, compared with 18% for procedure-based medicine, 22% for dentistry, 23% for law, and 26% for business. Although it remains the lowest of all professional groups examined, primary care medicine has made the largest percentage gain in net present value of all groups.
Although anticipated changes in physician incomes have occurred, the standing of physicians relative to other professional groups has not changed. Students can still anticipate relatively poorer returns on their educational investment when they choose a career in primary care medicine as compared with careers in procedure-based medicine or surgical specialties, business, law, or dentistry.
