The average resident made $56,500 in 2015, up roughly 2 percent over the year prior, according to Medscape's "Residents Salary & Debt Report 2016."
The report compiles responses from more than 1,800 residents across 25 specialties on compensation, training, hours worked and professional relationships. The results were anything but cookie cutter. "Their answers and comments were heartfelt and insightful," Medscape said.
Here we highlight four unexpected trends about residents' compensation and work environment from the report.
1. Not all young physicians aspire to be employed. Despite the profusion of media coverage on millennial physicians seeking employment, the whole generation cannot be lumped together. While Medscape found 29 percent of residents plan to become employed, nearly a quarter — 22 percent — anticipate becoming a partner or practice owner. Another 22 percent said they may want to practice in both settings and 28 percent still don't know.
"There is still that streak of independence and different types of interests are still alive and well," said Leslie Kane, senior director of Medscape Business of Medicine. "The younger people aren't all blindly saying, 'Yes, I want to get a job.'"
2. The gender pay gap among residents is smaller than the disparity among their physician peers. The average female resident earned $56,100 and average male resident earned $56,700 in 2015. And while the pay gap still exists, it shrunk by almost half between 2014 and 2015 from $1,000 to $600, according to Medscape.
Compared to the five-digit gender pay gap observed among academic physicians, primary care physicians and specialists, the resident pay gap is smaller, even when accounting for lower earnings. According to Medscape's Ms. Kane, this is likely due to a handful of factors. It is possible, she noted, that the pay gap grows as physicians age because women are less likely to go into lucrative specialties like urology or cardiology, choosing instead pediatrics, primary care or obstetrics and gynecology.
3. Satisfaction with compensation is not high. Nearly half of residents (48 percent of males and 45 percent of females) said they do not feel they are fairly compensated, according to the Medscape survey. This is up significantly from last year, when 40 percent of male residents and 35 percent of female residents reported dissatisfaction with their pay. Based on the comments in the survey, Ms. Kane said this is likely due to the added administrative burden residents are shouldering and the hours they work for relatively low pay. Some residents work up to 80 hours a week, she said, which can mean they are only making an equivalent of $15 an hour. "It has to do with all the things that are loaded onto physicians today in addition to seeing patients," Ms. Kane said. "It gets to them."
4. Residents generally have positive relationships with attending physicians. Though there is often a focus on the negative aspect of attending physician-resident relationships, 88 percent of respondents said they felt they have a good or very good relationship with attending physicians and 77 percent said they were somewhat or very satisfied with the attendings' treatment of residents. Among those residents who were dissatisfied, they named attending physicians' unwillingness to teach, demeaning behavior or lack of feedback as sources of dissatisfaction.
More articles on compensation:
UCSF hospital CEO under scrutiny for $5M payments for external board position
3 healthcare jobs that unexpectedly pay 6 figures
Academic female physicians paid $20,000 less than male counterparts